Why Northeast women are unsafe in Delhi

The last week of November 2010 witnessed the media – Delhi news in particular – indulge in some much-needed cop bashing over the gang rape of a 30-year-old BPO staffer from Mizoram. Even as the media glare forced the otherwise lax police to swing into action and nab all five accused within a fortnight, hardly any national daily, news channel or magazine tried to analyse why women from the Northeast are easy targets for eve teasers and rapists at large on the streets of the national capital.

According to unofficial estimates that often appear in Delhi news, the capital has some 100,000 people from the country’s Northeast. While police have had a disastrous record in making Delhi a safer city for women in general, their omissions become all the more glaring when we take a look at the atrocities committed on the people of the Northeast. To give a small statistic here, more than 16 cases of crime against Northeastern migrants to Delhi were registered in 2009.

The police inaction and the rising cases of Northeast women being raped and molested in Delhi raise an imminent question – have we failed as a society to assimilate those who are culturally different? Much of the Northeast, it must be noted, is a matriarchal society quite opposed to the patriarchal nature of the typical Oriental family. Matriarchy in the Northeast allows the women here to defy the taboos which bind their counterparts in most other parts of India, making them more self-reliant and independent to make their own choices. The chauvinist Delhiite, however, refuses to accept that women can be comfortable in their skin and assert themselves without a compromise. The trendy and chic dressing sense of Northeast girls is thus often misconstrued as a way to attract male attention, with some men even justifying sexual assault on these women saying “they ask for it”! 

The media, especially the Delhi Hindi news circle, has failed to capture the societal attitude towards women from the Northeast, which also reflects in the sexual harassment complaints flooding the North-East Support Centre and Helpline (NESCH), a help desk. The picture becomes even murkier when a study conducted by the centre is considered; the report reveals that 86 per cent of the people from the Northeast living in Delhi are forced to put up with some sort of discrimination almost every day.

While English News channels and newspapers try to wash their hands off the atrocities committed on people from the Northeast by claiming to give extensive coverage, no media house not even Delhi Hindi news space, which otherwise claims wider audience and readership, has attempted to analyse the negative societal attitude towards women from the Northeast and turn it around for a cleaner and safer Delhi.