“Although the per capita rate of rapes reported to the police in India is below that of many developed nations, some experts believe that many sexual attacks go unreported and that the actual number is far higher.”
Moving on from that shockingly obvious but necessary to make statement: the Indian government is trying desperately to convince potential tourists that the country is safe. Each state has been asked to set up their own police force devoted to tourists, while hotels have created female-only tours and areas. Some have given out cell phones filled with emergency numbers in them.
There’s already a preponderance of essays and writing for women online about the dangers/merits/safety concerns of women traveling alone in any country, let alone one that has a violence against women problem (basically all countries have a violence against women problem). So reports discouraging women from traveling on their own are less than uplifting. The Associated Press reports that a lot of these women are still traveling, just choosing less high-profile locations, like Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia or Vietnam. Kind of like when you didn’t go to spring break in Mexico because of whatever scary thing had happened there, so your mother told you to go to Costa Rica instead. These things do have a slightly cyclical quality to them for outsiders with nothing to go on but scary news reports.
For India, which is still in the early stages of combating this problem, it appears that the tactic they’ve chosen is to attempt to protect women from the men, and not stop the men from raping. Perhaps its a necessary step in the interim; rape culture doesn’t disappear overnight. After all, India is taking actual steps towards prosecuting the men who are perpetrating these crimes, due to massive outcry within and outside of their country. If concerns about losing money from wealthier white visitors from outside the country help prevent further crimes, that’s great. Right now though, it sounds a little bit as though tourist women are being given protections not available to the women of India who don’t get to go home at the end of 10 days.
India Scrambles to Reassure Tourists Shaken by Recent Attacks on Women [NYT]
Image via Rajanish Kakade/AP
