Fewer than a dozen hands went up when I asked a room of
over 500 Mumbai college girls how many did not have a mobile phone.
Given the growing belief that technology, as represented by the many
functions of a mobile phone, whether it would
aid the cause of women’s
safety?
For instance, within a month of the Delhi
gang rape in December 2012, a “women’s safety” app named “Nirbhaya” was
launched. Since then dozens of such apps have been launched around the
country. The latest is “Himmat” by the Delhi police, billed as the first
integrated women’s safety app in India.
Given the
increasing rate of rape and sexual assault on women, including minors,
will these technological interventions make any difference to women’s
lives? Delhi and Mumbai have also been promised thousands of
closed-circuit cameras in public places to enhance women’s safety.
Will
Indian women be safer with the government watching over them through
closed-circuit cameras and through safety apps on mobile phones? I think
not. For no app, no matter how smart or effective, can substitute for
the many steps that need to be taken to make women feel secure.
Principally, this involves changing a culture where attacking and
sexually abusing women is acceptable.
Within the
range of apps now available — with names like SmartShehar, VithU, BSafe,
Raksha — the majority merely facilitate a quick call for help to the
police and/or to relatives/friends in the event of an attack. A woman
fearing an attack or when actually attacked (although how a woman
surrounded by several men can grab her phone and use the app is anyone’s
guess) is expected to be saved by the app. Designers of these apps are
selling the belief that these apps will enhance women’s safety.
That,
in fact, is the problem with the apps. For they create the illusion of
safety and security without an understanding of the wider context of the
persisting lack of safety for women. The conversation around them also
fails to accept the reality of class. Apps are available to women with
smartphones; these are owned only by 13 per cent of our total population
(although there are an estimated 900 million mobile phone connections).
And they exclude women without phones or with ordinary phones.
Secondly,
these apps can work only if the official state machinery is responsive.
Even the single numbers (103, 100) for distress calls do not produce a
quick response, or indeed any response. Police apathy, whether you
approach a police station or call a number, is virtually a given. Until
this changes, the efficacy of any app is greatly limited.
Far
more effective is to use technology not just to “protect” women, or
give them an easy way to seek help, but to involve them in the process
of understanding the issues of safety and danger, and become active
participants. An app called SafetiPin, for instance, attempts to do that
through its mapping tool. Women can pinpoint areas that they consider
unsafe, put down reasons (for instance, dark corners or poor lighting)
as well as seek help. An interactive app of this kind allows women to
check their surroundings and also encourages them to add to the database
so that others are helped. But, ultimately, even this information can
make a difference only if the law enforcing machinery and city
authorities act on it.
The good news is that women
are using mobile technology to help themselves. There are several recent
examples. The woman raped in an Uber cab in Delhi photographed the
license plate of the cab on her phone, thereby assisting the police to
track down the rapist. A young woman on a flight to Bhubaneswar shamed
the middle-aged businessman in the seat behind her who tried to grope
her by filming him, putting the clips out on YouTube and filing a
complaint with the police. Well-known anti-trafficking activist Sunitha
Krishnan has circulated an edited version of a shocking video of a gang
rape by five men that has been on Whatsapp for some time. She has
launched a Twitter campaign #ShameTheRapistCampaign urging people to
find and identify the five men seen laughing away as they torture and
rape a woman.
New technologies, like smartphones, are
empowering and give women considerable autonomy. But in themselves,
even if they are loaded with the most efficient apps, they cannot alter
the reality of the dangers that women face in the public and private
space. The onus should not be put on women to use such technology to
keep themselves safe. Technology helps if the state does its job of
dealing with crime, and society refuses to be complacent and accept
sexual assault as just another crime.
--
No comments:
Post a Comment