INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING

Rising Rape in India … Why is it happening and how do we fix the problem

By Ashish Puntambekar The Nataraja Foundation, Mumbai

26th Aug ‘ 2013

Executive Summary

This study by the Nataraja Foundation reveals that POOR TEACHER QUALITY in India is the fundamental reason behind the huge rise in violence against women, including Rape.

The Foundation's view is that Rapes are rising mainly because just 46 % of teachers in India today have studied beyond class XII. In Bihar, where most of the Dec 16 ‘ 2012, Delhi Rapists came from, just 21 % of teachers have studied beyond class X ( class ten ). This situation is radically different, in terms of teacher quality, from that which existed just 25 – 30 years back. Today, as young people make career choices driven by economic rationale, the worst qualified, with no-where else to go are becoming teachers. It follows therefore that Poor Teacher Quality will have a devastating impact, going forward, on all aspects of national life from social values ( respect for women ) to GDP growth to national defence preparedness.

To solve this Macro problem, it is critical to rapidly improve teacher quality in India. Several proposals to this end have been on the Education Ministers / Prime Ministers

desk for the last 4 - 5 years, the largest and most innovative being " The Indian Education

Megaproject " ( http://www.nataraja.org.in/masseducationproject.htm ). The Education Megaproject is specifically designed to vastly improve Teacher Quality while simultaneously solving the chronic shortage problem in secondary school capacity ( There is a shortage of over 5,00,000 secondary Schools across the country according to the planning commission’s XIth plan document ). This means that millions of kids are dropping out of school after class IV, each year, as there are no schools to go to. Even more frightening it means that 150 million children have already been victims of this shortage in secondary school capacity … in our view.

As most of these young people are un-employable, crime of all types ( not necessarily rape ) is expected to rise rapidly by 2018 as tens of millions of young men who have had no secondary education are about to enter the job market in an economic environment where there are no Jobs.

The Nataraja Foundation estimate is that rapes could rise between 200 - 300 % in India by 2018 and the next Govt in Delhi could collapse just because they would be unable to control the problem. This is therefore going to get much worse before it gets any better … in our view.

This six page intelligence briefing investigates the core reasons for rising rape in India and specifically identifies and names the government organizations / ministries responsible for it. We believe that such a huge increase in violence against women is not possible without systemic failure at various levels of government and especially within the Ministry of HRD and the Planning Commission. The police in our view is just dealing with the symptoms ( i.e the first ripples ) of an approaching Tsunami of crime against women, the full magnitude of which will hit India between 2016 and 2018.

Given the above, we find it very interesting that no-where in the Indian Media is there any mention of the fact that “ POOR TEACHER QUALITY “ is responsible for the huge increase in violence against our daughters and sisters and we ask “ How many more girls must be raped and murdered before journalists start telling the truth to the people of this country. ”

Detailed Briefing on Rising Rape in India

Recent arguments to explain the increasing incidence of brutal rapes in India ( The Dec ‘ 2012 Delhi rape and the more recent rape of a photo journalist in Mumbai in Aug ‘ 2013 ) have been a lack of stringent laws and their effective enforcement combined with a slow and tardy process to dispense justice.

There is a fundamental error in this argument due to which it cannot explain the rising rape situation. Attacks against women are a global phenomenon but the recent surge in brutal crime against women in India is very different from global experience on two specific parameters :

1 ) its scale and

2) its brutality

Both of these suggest that the causative factors behind rising rape in India are unique and therefore the remedies will also have to be specific for them to be effective. Some of these remedies like police reforms need to be immediate while others will be executed over a longer term.

Solving the “ Rising Rape “ riddle

In India the steep rise in the number of rape cases in recent times indicates that it is a systemic problem and not a justice system issue. The brutality that we are seeing also appears to be systemic but the reasons for this“ scale “ and “ brutality “ each , are very different.

It is therefore extremely important to first understand the causes for rising rape in India before we even attempt to solve the problem. Understanding must come first, the remedies will follow.

Let us first examine the “ Scale “ issue and why crime in general is rising so rapidly in India.

Of the two components of the problem, the scale part comes from a seriously flawed central planning function within the government of India and specifically the way in which the Planning Commission and the Ministry of HRD function today.

Most people will never connect the Planning Commission with Rising Rape ... especially because they feel that no one in Government takes the Planning Commissions advice seriously. What they forget is that Govt. of India uses Planning Commission numbers, statistics and reports as the basis for government programmes ... and that is where deadly mistakes are made.

It is documented and well known that somewhere between 1995 and 1999, the population in India rose very rapidly. The census of 2001 was the first to notice this baby boom and by 2007, the pundits were talking of India’s enormous demographic dividend and the fact that we would soon have the largest percentage of the worlds young population.

The Planning Commission was therefore fully aware in 2001 itself, that by 2018, some 200 million young people would enter the job going age group in India in addition to the 112 million that are unemployed today ( 2013 ). The Ministry of HRD was also fully aware that there was a shortage of nearly 4.92 lakh secondary schools ( according to 11th Plan documents ) across the nation and that given these enormous shortages , over 150 Million children would drop out of school … as there would be no schools to go to after class IV.

What did the Ministry of HRD do between 2001 and 2013 to build capacities in secondary education to keep 150 million children in school and what did the Planning Commission do to generate employment creation projects to employ roughly 312 million people ?

The truth is that neither the Planning Commission nor the Ministry of HRD did anything and as a result on every street across India you find young men in the age groups 15 – 22 just sitting around with nothing to do. Their parents do not want them inside the house and so they play cricket on the streets and they stare at you as you go by. Their parents will soon tell them to generate their own cash and they are currently wondering what they will do. Look outside your gate anywhere in India and you will see these young men.

This is why crime of all kinds ( theft, extortion , kidnappings etc ) is rising and may well triple by 2018 if we do not create millions of new jobs … fast. This is the scale part of the problem.

Please note that nowhere in this analysis so far have we implied that un-employment has anything to do with rape. It does not. We have simply implied that the global correlation between un-employment and crime applies to India as well , but with one critical difference , its potentially vast scale.

Now let us examine the “ Rape “ and “ brutality “ part

An examination of the profiles of the six rapists involved in the 16thDecember incident involving a 23 year old medical student in New Delhi and the two rapists involved in the more recent rape of a 5 year old child clearly indicates where the moral turpitude and the brutality comes from.

In both cases the rapists came from Bihar which also incidentally has the lowest teacher quality in the country. In Bihar only 21 % of teachers have studied beyond class X while in the rest of India only 46 % of all teachers have studied beyond class XII according to a 2007 NUEPA ( National University of Education Planning and Administration ) report. The rest of India is nothing much to write about when it comes to teacher quality but Bihar’s statistics indicate that very dangerous depths have been reached. I would hasten to add that if this kind of teacher quality had been reached in any other state, it would have had the same result and therefore Bihar and its people are not at fault.

But with no standards to speak of and with free exposure to porn in the media what do we expect these young men to do when they have not been taught by properly qualified teachers ? Also, we are forgetting that lack of an education does not mean lack of aspiration. So tens of thousands of young men in India feel that if they cannot win a girls affections in courtship and then approach her parents for her hand as is the proper way, they can just rape her.

In our view therefore Rape is also going to rise ... maybe by 300 % by 2018 due to widespread moral turpitude brought on by “ poor teacher quality “.Rising rape is therefore essentially the fallout of a “ teacher quality “ problem. It is NOT due to widespread illiteracy but because of widespread and poor teacher quality.

Fundamental Flaw … “ Literacy Centric ” SSA System

Rising Rape has its genesis in the “ literacy centric “ approach adopted by the Ministry of HRD. In a literacy centric system, the focus is on getting children into primary school. In the process the system beggars the teacher and turns “ Teaching “ into a profession that no one wants to join. In fact as a result of the “ literacy centric “ approach of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan ( SSA ), the worst qualified have taken up the most important job in the country, the teaching of our children.

Therefore if India wants to become a US $ 4.5 Trillion economy by 2025, we need to shift to a “ teacher centric “ system where teaching as a career is the first choice for a graduate student. We need to remember that India achieved great heights under a teacher centric system. We forget today that one rupee spent on a good teacher will increase GDP by perhaps 30 rupees ( A 3000 % return ) . Investing in our teachers therefore will have the biggest GDP impact possible for any investment India can make.

It needs to be mentioned here that the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), in its report to the Prime Minister , suppressed critical information about teacher quality which was brought to their notice in 2007. If the NKC had identified “ Poor Teacher Quality “ as a critical action item and not an afterthought, it would have got more attention and we may not have had this huge RAPE problem today. But the NKC hid the true numbers and the immensity of the problem from the PMO and the public.

Getting to Remedies

It needs to be understood clearly that since the Rising Rape problem has its roots in the Ministry of HRD and the Planning Commission and the complete lack of initiative within these organizations over the last 8 – 9 years, the extreme damage done is going to take two – three decades to repair.

In the interim, thousands of our daughters and sisters are going to be attacked, raped and murdered. There is therefore a definite need for a Supreme Court led investigation ( SIT ) into why senior officials within these two organizations as well as the National Knowledge Commission and the Prime Minister’s Office delayed secondary education projects and misled the nation on “ Poor Teacher Quality ”.

A Supreme Court investigation is necessary, on two counts (1) Inaction and suppressing of critical information by the executive over the last 10 years has led to a serious law and order problem in the country … and therefore it is a matter for the Supreme Court (2) A Joint Parliamentary Committee ( JPC ) probe may not suffice, given past experience with JPC’s.

While the above is not strictly a remedy we still recommend it as it will ensure that officials are held accountable in the future even after they retire, given the criminal dimensions of their negligence. It will serve as a lesson for everyone.

Secondly, while we definitely need police reforms and we need fact track courts to crack down on crimes against women, … what we need most urgently is large employment

generation projects that can create over 100 million jobs that get young men off the streets and into serious work.

India needs to enter an era of Megaprojects very fast to avoid a demographic nightmare because each day we wait , an astounding 4,78,469 young people are being rendered unemployed, assuming elections are held on the 15thof June 2014.

Large secondary school and vocational training projects are the need of the hour. The planning commission recently recommended that the government drastically cut its role in healthcare. This decision needs to be reversed , as a well planned national healthcare scheme can easily create over 50 million new jobs. In fact the entire XIIth plan ( written by the current government ) in as much as it relates to Education and Healthcare needs to be scrapped and re-written.

Implementing the 74th amendment to the constitution by every state government can create another 50 million jobs as it will result in the clearing of literally hundreds of projects for execution in over 600 towns and cities across India. All of this is not difficult as we have the money today with nearly Rs. 20 lakh crores locked up in surplus land owned by public sector companies. It is possibly the last real resource India has and it must be used for Healthcare and Education first before it is used for wiping out the fiscal deficit as a government panel has recently recommended.

If we act in time we can easily create over 100 million new jobs and solve the immediate problem of rising crime and its scale. The biggest challenge any new government elected in 2014 will face in new Delhi is not the economy , nor the possibility of a war with China , but Rising Rape.

In fact if the new government ( any government ) is unable to check rising rape, the people of India, who are not known for strategic thinking or for their patience , will throw them out … and this may happen as soon as 2016.

- concluded –

Ashish Puntambekar runs an independent NGO “ The Nataraja Foundation “ in Mumbai. He is the project designer for two very large national projects : “ The Indian Education Megaproject and The Mumbai Megaproject, which are promoted by the think tank which he heads “ The Planning & Design Lab “ . Views expressed are personal.

http://www.nataraja.org.in/masseducationproject.htm

www.mumbaimegaproject.com