Will Bengal’s ‘friends of the night’ scheme make women safer?

Cynicism on guidelines designed to make women safer outside their homes, especially in their workplaces, is not misplaced. The Vishakha Guidelines were issued in 1997 by the Supreme Court, yet most employers still fail to comply with the provisions.

There is selective outrage by both people and political parties over some crimes, while other similar crimes are ignored. The Bharatiya Janata Party, in particular, has been notorious for selectively highlighting crimes against women for political advantage.

In Bengal, the BJP has been vociferous in demanding President’s Rule every time a particularly shocking crime draws public attention, while ignoring similar crimes in BJP-ruled states.

The gruesome gang-rape and murder of ‘Nirbhaya’ in Delhi was followed by a series of new measures to ensure women’s safety. Helpline numbers, more policewomen, extra security in buses, greater surveillance and CCTV cameras in public spaces were some of the initiatives.

The union government came out with the Nirbhaya Fund so that states could take similar steps. Recent reports suggest that while 70 per cent of the Rs 6,000 crore corpus has been disbursed to the states, few states have reported utilisation of more than half the amount they received.

Scepticism has therefore, not unexpectedly, greeted a slew of new initiatives proposed by the Trinamool Congress government in Bengal in the wake of the public outrage over the rape and murder of a junior doctor on 9 August at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

Christened 'Rattirer Saathi', the proposed guidelines are indeed shocking at one level. Restrooms with separate toilets for women, for example, has been suggested at workplaces. While the need for separate, lockable toilets was obvious all along, it was clearly not a priority in public places, institutions and offices. Surely it wasn't a need for women's safety alone, though?

Similarly, the proposal to identify safe zones with CCTV coverage appears to be a belated and desperate attempt at containing damage. Why should there be any 'unsafe zones'?

Not assigning women to ‘night duty’ wherever possible and ensuring that they work in pairs or team up with other women in a sort of buddy system again looks particularly regressive.

Not exceeding working hours of 12 hours a day, sensitising government employees about women’s safety and ensuring that security outposts include representation from all genders should have been no-brainers, enacted long ago.

No wonder the new schemes are being mocked by women themselves.

The relentless public campaign against the state government for its alleged omissions and commissions has been such that middle-class women with children in their arms were seen mocking and insulting the police, calling them rapists and murderers.

Women, who constituted a major support base for Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress, are now occasionally heard on Kolkata streets abusing her as a ‘khooni mukhyomontri’.

More guidelines are expected from the Supreme Court this week when it takes up the rape and murder of the R.G. Kar resident. The rape-and-murder case will be heard by a three-judge bench headed by the chief justice of India on 20 August, Tuesday.

While the suo moto cognisance of this case was welcomed by many, the CJI has also raised eyebrows because of the many instances in the past when the apex court has declined to hear similar cases until they had been heard and cleared through lower courts.

The Hathras rape and murder, for one, saw a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court refusing to entertain petitions, stating that the Allahabad High Court was seized of the matter and that the CBI was investigating it under the lower court's supervision.

Netizens have likewise pointed to a similar case of a nurse in Uttarakhand, raped and murdered on her way home from work. As a result, #JusticeForTasleemJahan has been trending on X all day on 19 August.

As a point of reference, the Vishakha Guidelines had in 1997 defined sexual harassment and laid down that it was the duty of the employer to ensure the safety of women employees, to take disciplinary action over ill treatment of women employees, to duly file complaints in case of criminal offences against women employees and to constitute complaint-redressal committees.