Street Violence against Women in India: Mapping Prevention Strategies

Abstract

Street violence against women (SVAW) in India is highly under researched. This article aims to understand the contextual factors responsible for the occurrence of SVAW in five cities of North‐east India: Agartala, Kohima, Imphal, Shillong, and Guwahati. The aftermath of an horrific gang rape and the subsequent death of a 23‐year‐old woman in a moving bus in New Delhi in December 2012 served as a wake‐up call for the Government of India (GOI), augmenting the need to understand the issues of SVAW. On December 23, 2012, the GOI constituted the Justice Verma Committee (JVC) who prepared a 630‐page report, submitted to the Prime Minister of India, which identified “failure of governance” as the central cause of SVAW. Based on some of the recommendations of the JVC report, the GOI passed the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2013. Drawing upon semi‐structured interviews from qualitative research in combination with a questionnaire survey, this research aims to understand the factors that allow SVAW to persist. Using recommendations of the JVC report and the Justice Usha Mehra Commission, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, , as well as research findings, this article is an attempt to inform prevention strategies aimed at escalating the safety of women in public spaces of the study region.