Vision 2047: All genders should be able to occupy public spaces in India without fear of harassment

CCTV cameras can only be a starting point. We need "more visible policewomen, more sensitized police forces, making it easier to make a complaint". (Photo by Burst via Pexels)

Last week, a Twitter user posted a video clip featuring an Indian girl being interviewed on the streets of Canada. “What’s your favourite thing about Canada?” asks the interviewer. “You can just walk around, see the scenery, the sunrise and sunset,” she replies. The Twitter user who posted this added his two bits: “The Avg IQ of the country went up after her departure.”

Hot takes like this are par for the course on Twitter; but what was remarkable was the number of responses this tweet triggered, many from women, who completely understood and empathized with the girl’s sentiments. “That kind of mental ease that comes with general social safety is something women almost never ever feel here,” one user explained.

Sexual harassment on the street and in public spaces is a particularly insidious problem. According to a report published by the World Bank last year, 80 percent of women surveyed in Delhi had faced sexual harassment, but only 1 percent had reported it. Statistics from other metros are just as shocking: more than half of the respondents in Chennai and 63 percent in Pune had experienced it; 75 percent of the female railway commuters who responded didn’t know there were helpline numbers.

“Even today, when you walk down a street it is quite common to experience harassment, touching, bullying, comments,” says Elsa D’Silva, founder of the SafeCity app, an international platform that shares testimonials of harassment, and powers communities, police and city government to prevent violence in public and private spaces. “And with the digital world, this is now becoming even more complicated with people taking pictures and videos without permission, even using digital means to blackmail you.”

“My vision for 2047,” says D’Silva, “is that all genders should be able to occupy public spaces in India without fear of harassment. This will, however, be possible only if everyone in India makes it a point to make these public spaces safe; if we all educate ourselves on the different forms of violence, understand the laws, and know that it is a crime to commit these acts.”

Much has changed in the past couple of decades with regards to sexual violence in public spaces. More stringent laws have been put into place. In 2013, an amendment was inserted in the Indian Penal Code that criminalized sexual harassment; and the Sexual Harassment Against Women in the Workplace Act was passed. “We now have many comprehensive laws to ensure that children are safe, and definitions of rape have also undergone a change,” notes D’Silva.

The needle has shifted at a social level too, says Jasmeen Patheja, an artist-activist who founded Blank Noise, an initiative to bring attention to street harassment, in 2003. “Street harassment is no longer dismissed as a non-issue,” says Patheja. “That is a victory. We have the permission to name and define it, to bring it in the foreground, claim the words ‘akeli’ ‘awaara’ and ‘aazaad’, and create a sense of belonging in our cities and public spaces.”

Much of the movement on this front has been thanks to civil society initiatives like Blank Noise and SafeCity. Blank Noise started off building its community of “Action Sheroes, Heroes and Theyroes” with the “I Never Ask For It” campaign, which in its first decade, invited and inspired survivors to tell their stories, and send in the garments they were wearing at the time of the incident, to be archived as witness and shared memories; to create a culture of listening and to reconcile with notions of guilt and victim-blaming. They also run the “Meet to Sleep” initiative, which invites individuals to sleep anywhere under the open sky.

In the last 10 years, SafeCity has encouraged the idea of speaking up by documenting over 50,000 personal stories. They’ve “made the invisible visible” by engaging with over 1 million people through their app, available in 12 languages, with partners in 17 countries, through workshops, focus groups, discussions and advocacy campaigns on the ground.

Others, such as Kriya and Cequin, help girls and women build a relationship with public spaces through football. Organizations like Kalpana Viswanath’s Safetipin; Neha Singh’s Why Loiter movement inspired by Shilpa Phadke’s book of the same name; campaigns like I Will Go Out; and global SlutWalk initiative have all done much to challenge the status quo and trigger radical conversations around bodily autonomy.

“In the next 24 years,” says D’Silva, “we would love to see the legal systems being used in an effective manner. Today, less than 10 percent of all incidents are reported, out of which less than 5 percent go through the entire system for justice. That means a lot more perpetrators are going scot-free. I would even like to see more community-based resolution mechanisms.”

When talking about public spaces, infrastructure naturally comes into play. “We talk about smart cities, but are we also looking at making these cities safer?” CCTV cameras can only be a starting point. “It has to go hand-in-hand with more visible policewomen, more sensitized police forces, making it easier to make a complaint.”

21st-century initiatives like Why Loiter and Blank Noise are focused on reclaiming women's right to occupy public spaces. (Photo by Jonnas Duarte via Pexels)

Fundamental to this vision is education. “I would like to see a curriculum that encompasses these topics from an early age so that right from the get-go, people understand boundaries, consent, have respect for each other and are willing to do the right thing and stand up for each other,” explains D’Silva.

When it comes to reporting crimes, she adds, raising awareness about facilities like the cybercrime.gov.in portal—over which one can report crimes anonymously, if desired—might be useful. “Technology definitely has a role to play as it’s easier to connect and educate people across all the geographies in India, it’s a large country with many languages,” she adds. “How do we disseminate this in a way that men and women and all genders feel like they’re not under the scanner but that they have a role to play in making communities and cities safer?”

“At an individual level, people must take an interest in safety, they must understand the spectrum of abuse and violence, know their laws and rights, and be willing to be better bystanders,” D’Silva adds. “Knowing what is personal space, within the physical and digital world, is very important. We must also be conscious of how we are using our power and privilege to either empower people or maybe violate their rights.”

“This conversation is not over until there is defencelessness embodied in every body, in every woman, girl, non-binary person, across caste, class and religion,” says Patheja. What does it feel to be defenceless on the streets, but also at home; on a college campus, but also at school; on a bus, but also in the workplace?”

“Defencelessness of the body” is Patheja’s vision. But what does that really mean? “Our bodies are constantly prepared, we are always cautious,” she explains. “From a gender perspective, we are raised to be careful. We are raised to hug our uncles sideways. What does the opposite of that feel like?”

“Each of us has a right to be trusting or loving, without having to be in a state of defence all the time because that is a burdensome existence,” Patheja concludes. “You can only be defenceless where you feel belonging. And you can only feel belonging where you feel safe enough.”