Social Bankruptcy

Within a fortnight after the shocking incident of gang molestation & public stripping of an innocent helpless girl at Guwahati, comes another shocker…A young lady is sexually harassed, slapped and assaulted by four youth in a moving train, in broad daylight and in full public glare. The lady, an orphan, runs towards the other part of the compartment to save herself when the youths ask for sexual favours in return for money. She refuses and resists and is thrown away from the train. The lady lands 25 feet below on a dry river bed…

Not a single passenger protested the crime or came to her rescue. Her only fault was that she was travelling alone in the train (read as without a male counterpart, in our country). She survived miraculously, but suffered grievous injuries. The place (Maddur) where the incident happened is only about 80 kms away for the IT super city Bangalore.

What is common between the two incidents? No prizes for guessing…devilish behaviour of few men and total public apathy. Such behavior is spiteful, unfortunate, uncivilized, savage and uncultured.

I am not exaggerating or over-generalizing but most men folk in this part of the world behave like wild animals. For that matter ask any girl or women in this country, if ever they have encountered any kind of teasing or sexually laced advances or attempts by men folk. Almost every female will tell you that they have witnessed something of this sort (minimum is an uncomfortable bad touch) at one time or the other in their lives. The culprits are all around the streets, lanes and public places, and many times the tormentors are close relatives and friends. The victims are helpless, most of the times, and silently suffer because of taboo or fear of social boycott (as by default a lady’s morality is questioned in such cases in our culture) or because of fear of physical security of self and of family members.

I am not painting the picture black, but undoubtedly there are lots of ugly black spots & blotches on our social canvass.

Even pathetic is the response of the custodians of the civil society. They are insensitive, preach morality to female victims instead and do nothing more than lip-service.

Organizations, mini-society in themselves, are mirror images of the larger society. At the cost of repetition perhaps, but I wish to emphasize that they need to be more cognizant of the social dynamics that prevails in countries like India. Such prowling vultures, who see women as an object of desire, could inhabitate organizations as stealthily as they populate the larger society, in the garb of official cloaks. The organizational policy and machinery must be sharp and alert to detect such people with sick minds and deal with them in the toughest manner possible.

A Melbourne Business School report has found that sexist jokes negatively impact women’s performance at work. The report also indicates that organizations fail to tackle ‘low-level of sexism’ despite having policies in place that target ‘overt sexual harassment’.

In India, the situation worsens further because the policies not only fail to check the rampant ‘low-level of sexism; in organizations but also many a time fails to deal ‘overt sexual harassment’ with an iron-fist. Amongst many reasons for the same, lack of proper reporting mechanisms, management apathy (much like prevailing social apathy), long legal route and social harassment of the victim, are the primary reasons. It’s high time organizations do something about this issue that perhaps single-handedly erodes engagement in organizations, especially of the female employees.

Socially and culturally, however, I feel we are close to bankruptcy. Hopes of social and cultural transformation seem bleak at the moment and without the same, I do not see how our organizations would be able to deal with such menace.