Govt Rejects Poll Stating India As Most Unsafe Country For Women, Says It Ignores Positive Data

Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi has slammed a poll conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation that ranked India as the most dangerous country for women.

The minister has written to Thomson Reuters demanding answers as to why the ministry wasn¡¯t consulted for the report. She has also raised questions about the methodology used to get the official numbers, the sample size used and the who all are the stakeholders.

The last time Thomson Reuters Foundation released the data was in 2013. Strangely, the BJP government, which was then in the opposition, had absolutely no problems with it. Even the leaders belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party slammed ruling Congress citing the data and failure to ensure the safety of women in the country.

In 2013 report, India ranked fourth in the index of most dangerous countries for women. The methodology was the same even then. The only difference being that BJP was then in the opposition and now in power.

Read more: Modi Sarkar Fails To Stop ¡®Naari Par Var¡¯, India Is Officially Most Dangerous Country For Women

Stating that the poll has collected opinions of 548 persons on healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual violence, non-sexual violence and human trafficking, WCD said, "India is far ahead of many countries in most of these areas and has also seen significant improvement in indicators when compared with its own performance in previous years. Therefore, the ranking of India is a surprise and clearly inaccurate."

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The Ministry also said that there is positive data in the areas of violence too. "There has been a drastic reduction in child marriage over the years, with reports of marriage in the age group of 0-9 years now being nil. Further, the percentage of women age 15-19 years who were already mothers or pregnant has dropped from 16% in 2005-06 to 7.9% in 2015-16."

WCD said that the usage of an opinion poll to peg India as the most dangerous country for women is a clear effort to malign the nation and draw attention away from ground improvements seen in recent years.

National Commission for Women chairperson Rekha Sharma also rejected the survey report on Tuesday, claiming that the sample size was small and could not be representative of the whole country. "The Commission rejects the survey in question. For a nation as big as India, with a population of approximately 1.3 billion, the sample size of the survey is not representative of the country as a whole," she said.

"Women are very aware in India of issues and there is no way that we could be ranked number one in such a survey. The countries that have been ranked after India have women who are not even allowed to speak in public," Sharma said, without naming a specific country.

For cultural traditions, India claimed the top spot on the list of the worst country after cases of acid attacks, female genital mutilation, child marriages, forced marriages, physical assault, female infanticide and marital rape, something that the Supreme Court had ruled cannot be considered a criminal offence.

Do figures endorse the poll?

The National Family Health Survey has revealed 21 per cent of ever-married women have experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence at the hands of their spouse.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report of 2016 states as many as 39 crimes were reported every hour in India - cruelty by the husband or his relatives was the most reported crime against women, accounting for 33 per cent of all crimes in 2016. Rape accounted for 11 per cent of all crimes against women with 38,947 cases reported in 2016, or four every hour.

The data revealed that 2016 saw the lowest conviction rate (18.9 per cent) for crimes against women in a decade.

More than 8,000 cases of human trafficking (gender irrespective) were reported in India in 2016.

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A recent World Bank report pointed out how job advertisements in India prefer male candidates. The Reuters survey has also quoted a number of about 20 million women who have reportedly left India¡¯s workforce since 2005, partly due to poor treatment.

NCW dismissed the report saying the crimes against women have not increased and that reporting and police registration of such cases have surged. However, can the number of cases being reported to exceed the number of cases actually taking place?

The problem lies with the fact that instead of learning from the report and taking steps to make the country a safer place for women, politicians are engaging in a war of words and senseless political mudslinging.