There’s a pathetic quality of helplessness within the Indian establishment in ideating ways and means to combat the rash of ghastly sex crimes against women and children — especially the latter — which has erupted across the country.
In 2013, with the aspiration to lift the country’s 550 million children and youth out of poverty, illiteracy and unemployment, at considerable expense in terms of time and money, your editor registered the Children First Party of India (CFPI) with the Election Commission. Promoted on the premise that middle class India is genuinely interested in educating and saving the country’s children, a condition of membership was a one-time subscription fee of Rs.100. Less than 100 members paid the fee, forcing closure of the party. But that’s another story.
However, one of the promises made in the CFPI manifesto was reduction of crimes against women and children by 75 percent within 12 months. The manifesto proposed investing the National Commission for Women at the Centre and in the states with suo motu powers to adjudicate cases of ‘minor’ molestation and impose sentences of up to 60 days including community service; establishment of “under-cover squads of women police backed by highly mobile flying squads of special helicopter-borne police personnel on stand-by in all metros and state capitals to apprehend, prosecute, punish and incarcerate sex offenders and predators”.
Unfortunately for the cruelly neglected children of India, this child-focused political initiative collapsed under the weight of middle class inertia and oriental fatalism. Regrettably, the unknown sage who observed that post-independence India is the graveyard of innovative solutions for persistent age-old problems, was dead right.