<a href="http://www.blogadda.com" title="Visit BlogAdda.com to discover Indian blogs"> <img src="http://www.blogadda.com/images/blogadda.png" width="80" height="15" border="0" alt="Visit BlogAdda.com to discover Indian blogs" /></a>

21st century women of India

 According to census 2011, Female literacy was at a national average of 65% whereas the male literacy was 82%.

How tough life as a woman can be in the world's biggest democracy, even 46 years after Indira Gandhi made history as the country's first female prime minister  in 1966 & Sonia Gandhi world’s 6^th most powerfull women the world

But recently in Assam a shameful act in in Meghalaya showed the reality. There is currently no special law in India against sexual assault or harassment, and only vaginal penetration by a penis counts as rape. Those who molested the woman in Guwahati would be booked for "insulting or outraging the modesty of a woman" or "intruding upon her privacy". The maximum punishment is a year's imprisonment, or a fine, or both

"We have a woman president, we've had a woman prime minister. Yet in 2012, one of the greatest tragedies in our country is that women are on their own when it comes to their own safety," said a female newsreader on NDTV. 

On one hand we are making developments in infrastructure, Economy, Science, Engineering ,but on the other hand India is declining. 

The Thomas Reuters Foundation’s Trust Law poll analyzed the G20 states in regard to the status of women and ranked them in six categories, being, quality of health, freedom from violence, freedom from trafficking and slavery, work place opportunities, access to resources such as education and property rights and participation in politics.
India ranked last out of 19 in the first three categories and second last in work place opportunities and access to resources. It stung – especially as Saudi Arabia was at the second-worst. "In India, women and girls continue to be sold as chattels, married off as young as 10, burned alive as a result of dowry-related disputes and young girls exploited and abused as domestic slave labour," said Gulshun Rehman, health programme development adviser at Save the Children UK, who was one of those polled.

 The best score was women’s participation in politics, but here it ranked only number 17 out of 19.
India's parliament has one of the world's lowest proportions of female MPs, with only 10.7% of its 783 MPs being women, roughly half of Bangladesh's 19.7% and Pakistan's 21%. This puts it in the bottom quarter of 189 nations' parliaments ranked by their percentages of female MPs in 2012,

The United Nations Development Programme makes a valiant effort to compile various indicators relevant to women's prospects, and lists countries by the results as a “gender inequality index”. For 2011 the UN's compilation of data on maternal mortality and health care, teenage pregnancy, women's representation in parliament and the workforce, women's education and more, suggest that India ranks a relatively unimpressive 134th out of 173 countries. That, however, is at least a few notches above neighbouring Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Even worse, a Unicef report this year on adolescents finds that not just 57 per cent of Indian males but also 53 per cent of females in the 15-19 age-group believe that wife beating is justified. (Even in Bangladesh, only 41 percent of females justify wife beating.) Such acceptance and sanctification of domestic violence does not speak of a civilised society.

A preference for sons and fear of having to pay a dowry has resulted in 12 million girls being aborted over the past three decades, according to a 2011 study by the Lancet.

Last week: a group of village elders in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, central India, who banned women from carrying mobile phones, choosing their own husbands or leaving the house unaccompanied or with their heads uncovered. "The story is the same," said the news anchor. "No respect for women. No respect for our culture. And as far as the law is concerned: who cares?"

A glance at the Indian media reveals the range of abuse suffered by the nation's women on a daily basis. Today it was reported that a woman had been stripped and had her head shaved by villagers near Udaipur as punishment for an extramarital affair. Villagers stoned the police when they came to the rescue.

 In Uttar Pradesh, a woman alleged she was gang raped at a police station – she claimed she was set on by officers after being lured to the Kushinagar station with the promise of a job.

Few weeks back, a man in Indore was arrested for keeping his wife's genitals locked. Sohanlal Chouhan, 38, "drilled holes" on her body and, before he went to work each day, would insert a small lock, tucking the keys under his socks.

 A month back, children were discovered near Bhopal playing with a female foetus they had mistaken for a doll in a bin. 

In the southern state of Karnataka, a dentist was arrested after his wife accused him of forcing her to drink his urine because she refused to meet dowry demands.

In June, a father beheaded his 20-year-old daughter with a sword in a village in Rajasthan, western India, parading her bleeding head around as a warning to other young women who might fall in love with a lower-caste boy.

The latest available statistics compiled by the home ministry's National Crime Records Bureau show that between 1953 and 2011, the incidence of rape rose by 873 per cent, or three times faster than all cognisable crimes put together, and three-and-a-half times faster than murder. 

45% of Indian girls are married before the age of 18, according to the International Centre for Research on Women (2010); 56,000 maternal deaths were recorded in 2010 (UN Population Fund) Plus crimes against women are on the increase: according to the National Crime Records Bureau in India, there was a 7.1% hike in recorded crimes against women between 2010 and 2011 (when there were 228,650 in total). The biggest leap was in cases under the "dowry prohibition act" (up 27.7%), of kidnapping and abduction (up 19.4% year on year) and rape (up 9.2%).
In India a woman is raped every 22 minutes, 
and a bride burnt for dowry every 58 minutes. 
The police last year registered 42,968 cases of molestation of women -- a figure that's about 80 percent higher than the number of rapes. The number of crimes recorded against women, including sexual harassment, cruelty by the husband or his relatives, kidnapping or abduction, and human trafficking, exceeds 2,61,000.

Crimes against women in UP, the findings were dismal. According to the 2009 report of the National Crimes Research Bureau, the total number of reported crimes against women was 203804, with 23254 (11.4%) being in UP. This was the highest number of crimes all over the country. In 2010 out of a total of 213585 crimes against women, 20169 were in UP (9.44%), again the highest in the country. In an article published in the Hindustan Times in November 2011, it was reported that from the period between August 2011 to November 2011, the highest number of complaints of harassment and crimes against women received by the National Commission for Women, were from UP (2853 out of 2889).

Another recent Incident Hours after Sonia Gandhi's visit in Kaithal, Harayana, another girl raped in Haryana. 14 rape cases have been reported from the Congress-ruled state in the last one month Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader and former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala on Wednesday backed the view that the marriageable age for girl be lowered to prevent the rising number of rapes in the state.

Now if a girl raped at the age of 8 what will be age of Marriage & what about the married women rape cases.These kinds of solutions we are expecting.Can't we have a strong law & order in the country so that people should think twice before doing these terrble acts.