Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
In 2020, as in the previous year, the state had the dubious honour of being the rape capital of the country
Indian politicians, irrespective of the party they belong to, have a tendency to make remarks about gender justice that become highly controversial. The latest to join this illustrious list of leaders is the chief minister of Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot. Some days ago, while asked about the number of rape cases in Rajasthan, Mr. Gehlot remarked the stringent rape laws passed after the shocking Nirbhaya gang rape and murder in Delhi in 2012 was responsible for the risen the number of rapes as well as murders of minors in his state. His logic: the rapist is now ware that he could get the death sentence for raping a minor. So instead of just raping or gang raping the minor, the accused also end up killing her. This has provided ammunition to the opposition party in the state, the BJP to target Ashok Gehlot and label him as insensitive and ant-women. It is, however, not the mandate of India Tracker to wade into political disputes and controversies. As repeated often, the mandate is to look at credible data and draw some conclusions from them.
The most credible source of data when it comes to crimes against women (actually all crimes)is the annual report released by the National Crime Records Bureau. Despite modern technology and the digital revolution, it still takes a long time for data to be released in India. The latest NCRB report provides details of all crimes in the year 2020. The news is not good for Rajasthan. In 2020, as in the previous year, the state had the dubious honour of being the rape capital of the country. As the first chart shows, Rajasthan recorded 5310 cases of rape in 2020, the highest number for any state in India. It was followed by Uttar Pradesh with 2769 rape cases. Uttar Pradesh has a population that is three times that of Rajasthan. And yet, Rajasthan had almost double the number of rape cases compared to Uttar Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh, that used to lead in the number of rape cases in the past, is now at number three.
One can blame patriarchy, feudal mindsets and much more for the number of rapes reported in many north and central Indian states. One could also ague that many cases continue to go unreported and hence it is difficult to get an accurate picture of how bad the situation is. But the second chart clearly shows that rape cases in Rajasthan have been consistently going up in the previous decade. The state had a BJP government from December 2013 to December 2018. The number of rape cases went up from 3759 in 2014 to 4335 in 2018. By the end of 2018, Ashok Gehlot was back as the chief minister of a Congress government in Rajasthan. In 2019, the number of reported rape cases show up to almost 6000, before inexplicably declining to 5310 in 2020. Or perhaps, the stringent lockdowns of the year resulted in a lesser number of rapes. It is for political analysts and sociologists to draw whatever conclusions they want to.
