The pandemic shadow

Ruchika Bhuyan

(The writer can be reached at ruchika.121504@gmail.com)

Non-violence, the first article of the Father of our Nation's faith and last article of his creed, still persists to be an unaccomplished ideal in the largest democracy of the world, while violence is a diabolical reality even today. When the framers of our Constitution averred India as a "SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC", were they aware of the fact that "democracy" would become a misnomer for India in the years to come?

While we enter into yet another month of the globe being plagued by a pandemic, another global pandemic limps behind, struggling to keep pace and shadowed over by the gravity of COVID-19. On April 6, 2020, the United Nation COVID-19ns Women had published a report regarding the amplifying cases of gender violence at homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gender-based violence, as described by the World Bank, is a global pandemic that attacks 1 in 3 women in their lifetime. As we penetrate deeper into what seems to be an endless labyrinth of quarantine, more domestic violence helplines and shelters across the world are reporting rising calls for help. Women's rights activists, government authorities and civil society partners from Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States have waved red flags of increasing reports of domestic violence during the crisis, and intensified demand for emergency shelters. A rise in calls for help by more than 30% has been registered by helplines in Singapore and Cyprus and 40% of frontline workers have reported heightened requests for help with violence that was escalating in intensity in a New Wales survey.

While violence at homes, especially against women, is stretched all across the globe, it happens to have certain epicentres where its ramifications are beyond barbaric and inhuman. One of the epicentres is India, the country where citizens are constitutionally assured the power of their voices. If we were told that our voices mould the country, why were we never told what we should do when our voices are snatched from our throats and drowned in a sea where we lose our individualities?

Researchers estimate that there have been 50 million cases of female infanticide or foeticide over the last three decades in India. However, these are mere gross estimated figures of reported cases. The number of cases of assaults, violence and any other form of sexual abuse that remain underreported or unreported will send shivers down your spine. Less than 40% of women who experience violence seek help of any sort or report the crime and less than 10% of those women seeking help go to the police. The reasons for these diminutive percentages are multifarious. Self-blame and guilt is a major barrier stopping women from leaving their houses and seeking refuge. In the patriarchal society we dwell, women have for decades been made to believe that they are responsible for all the detrimental abuses hurled at them, simply because they are women. Moreover, crimes of sexual violence are many a time tolerated, minimized or even normalized by our society. With lack of effective sanctions to punish the perpetrators, it only endorses their evil actions further. Due to this normalization of violence at home, women in the rural and backward regions of their country don't even recognise it as a crime because they are taught that their traditions dictate them to be inferior to men. At times, women are emotionally manipulated by their abusers or they feel that after having lost all their dignity and worth, after being violated, they are disempowered. By exerting sway over the victim's financial resources, the abuser throws her between the devil and the deep blue sea: she is compelled to choose between further abuse/assault or penury.

The present situation, where being confined to the four walls of our houses has become a strict precaution to shield our health, has become a difficult impediment for victims to break through, making reporting even harder, including restrictions on women's and girls' access to phones and helplines and disrupted public services of police and justice. These disruptions may also be compromising the care and support that survivors need, involving clinical management of rape, and mental health and psycho-social support.

Miniscule efforts lead to gigantic triumphs. Although the graph of domestic violences cases might still be ascending a steep slope, there have been endeavours in the direction of helping women who seek it but unable to ask for it. In two blocks of rural Jharkhand, India, PCI staff have been supporting women's self-help group (SHG) members to discuss these vulnerabilities with their daughters and neighbours and help prevent violence in the home. While this might be a small step, it has been efficacious. Sushmita Mukherjee, PCI/India's Director of Gender & Adolescent Girls, says that each block mobilizer is averaging 100 calls per month to local women. These conversations involve discourses on the family's well-being, the impact of COVID-19 on their livelihoods, how to access government support services, and any anxieties and other challenges they might be experiencing.

While there might be a woman somewhere in the country screaming for help behind locked doors right now but being unable to make her voice reach to us, it is time we turned our ears to listen to them. It's time we talked about it so that people like us who find haven and protection in our homes, realize that there are others who wish they had rather been homeless. By talking about it, maybe we can make word reach to those who are in a position to provide help. By spreading but a word of awareness, maybe we can save another woman from losing her dignity.