Rapists, monster schools, and cops who have gone over to the other side

Bengaluru: In this plethora of facts and factoids that we plough through on the spurt in rape cases that have come to our attention, and in particular the rape of the 22 year old, abducted from her car by a deviant, slap bang in the middle of an urban pocket like Fraser Town that’s abuzz even at midnight, my mind hasn’t been able to get past this one deeply troubling fact. Let me make that several!!

The disquiet that eats away at my innards, remains over the six year old girl, locked up in a room and left all alone by a certain ignoramus with a degree in teaching, because the child was naughty!

Can this woman who left the door wide open for predators – whom the school had no business to hire anyway – to violate the child and scar her for life, even sleep at night! And the other bugbear. On the odd night, I leave office at midnight and head into Fraser Town to pick up my son from his friend’s home, I’ve noticed the complete disregard for traffic rules, displayed by young people who have just broken their roza; many of whom are riding motorbikes, three to a bike, with nary a one, wearing a helmet, and some blithely chatting away on their mobile phones as they whiz past you, racing, wheels up as they zig-zag through these narrow roads.

Even if one puts all this down to youthful exuberance, here’s the nub – why is there not a single policeman in sight? Where are they? Asleep? Or subjected to all too familiar arm-twisting, deliberately staying away at the instructions of the powers that be, whose posters, larger than life, now noticeably, mark every corner? The BBMP, letting that rule fall by the wayside too?

And why is that? Are Frazer Town, and Coles Park and Promenade Road and Old Madras Road, and Old Airport Road and the Peripheral Ring Road, not part of Bengaluru? Why is there not one khakhi-clad, lathi-wielding policeman to stop the mayhem, keep an eye out for the rest of us who have to be extra vigilant lest we cannon into the young and no doubt, become the fall guys if anything untoward happens?

Anywhere else in the city, there are more than enough of them, (police, I mean), to flag you down, whip out their notebooks and mobile phones and fine you, if you so much as step one foot out of the straight and narrow. Many, stand around in large loutish groups at restaurants and bars at closing time, their wallets bulging with the easy cash they’ve just extorted or tucking into the food that the restauranteur buys him off with.

But Frazer Town? Naah. Not one law-enforcer to be seen, or heard. Even if they are, they stand around, turning a blind eye as the bikes careen past, weaving dangerously through the traffic. No wonder weirdos like Nasir – son of a politician, of course – thrive in Namma Bengaluru! No wonder their inner caveman kicks in when they see a girl talking to a boy. That too, at midnight! That’s a woman of loose morals, isn’t she? Talking to a boy inside a parked car! Perfectly, legitimate prey. Easy pickings. Like that ill-informed minister from Bihar said, let’s just put the predatory behaviour of men like Hyder Nasir, down to the use of mobile phones and meat-eating, shall we?

How else can we explain that a rape happens every second in India, and that as Bengaluru MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar pointed out, there’s been a 300% increase in the number of rapes, child rapes, this year alone.Hoysalas, Cheetahs, Fast Track Courts, Women’s 24 hour helplines! Nothing but words, platitudes mouthed when public ire shows up our so-called administrators for what they are – ineffective, hollow, completely oblivious to our fears. And forgotten as quickly, when the public outcry fades.

A fast track, that has no rapists to charge or indict because the guardians of our city haven’t been able to nab any! A women’s helpline that doesn’t work because the policewomen do a nine to five – it’s not safe for them to work after dark! As for Hoysalas and Cheetahs, if policemen riding a bike or driving a jeep have actually been able to stop a rape in Bengaluru, do let me know. By all means increase

their number. So far though, that hasn’t been the case. Instead, its protest and ye shall be silenced.

Remember the case of the unmoved Sheila Dikshit and the Delhi rape protesters, hosed down, beaten, tear-gassed by police. But rape an innocent, and a sympathetic macho policeman will go nudge-nudge, wink-wink when the hapless, traumatised woman turns to the police for help. The implication being that the woman is somehow to blame.

A small time hood like Hyder Nasir. Or a police inspector. What’s the difference? So much for the guardians of the peace!

Which brings me to the equally disturbing next point. Do none of the schools – and there are approximately 22,000 private schools in the city – instruct teachers on how to tackle a difficult child?In the case of the six year old, firstly, the punishment does not fit the crime. Locking up this child – for that matter, any child – every time it was deemed she should be punished, is as big a crime as the rape. Why didn’t the teacher bring the child’s behaviour to the principal’s notice? She could have made the child sit in the corner. Or, if that didn’t work and that was having no effect, had a chat with the child’s parents.

Attention Deficit Disorder – if that is indeed, what the hapless child victim was suffering from – cannot be banished through harsh methods. It needs care, understanding and specialised attention.The tragedy is that most of our schools are no more than business enterprises. Not centres for learning but a mass factory that we believe will somehow magically turn our children into well-informed adults who can go out into the world, equipped to deal with its many challenges.

As the teacher from this school has proven, and the two men who thought nothing of destroying a little girl’s childhood, the days that schools are given a free rein must end.

It’s the end of the age of innocence. So it’s not more Hoysalas we need or saying members of the BJP are rapists, Mr. Chief Minister. With the best of intentions, what the city needs is an effective, hands on governor (and I don’t mean the denizens of our Raj Bhavans,) who knows how to make Bengaluru a safer place for you and me and our girl child.

So I would top my check list, with educating the police force. Recruit a force that is as committed to preserving the city as the armed forces are to protecting our nation’s borders; who do not see the job as a meal ticket, but as a means of serving society.Let’s get mobile foot patrols in our residential neighbourhoods, employ the Gurkhas of my childhood who made me feel safe when I heard the lathi at our gate.

Let’s get every hostel and paying guest registered. Let’s put every man with a record of molesting women behind bars, and publicise that rapists will get death. Let’s teach our children well – boys and girls – of the wolves in sheep’s clothing who live in our midst, and what kind of hug or embrace is appropriate and what isn’t. Let’s appoint an effective education board, that is not open to bribes or persuasion by any other means, which lays down strict guidelines on the kind of people who should be employed in schools. It’s not just the teachers who matter, it’s the support staff that must be vetted, equally stringently.

And finally, let’s just accept that everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Like I said, its end of the age of innocence. Not so very different from Delhi, are we?