Jaipur: Bollywood star Deepika Padukone should stay away from Rajasthan. No, she doesn’t need to be afraid because of a threat by a young Rajput leader Mahipal Singh Makrana to chop off her nose but due to the fact that women between 18-44 years are not safe in the state.
In 2015, Rajasthan was on the third position in the country in number of total rape cases reported. Both, in the age bracket of 18-29 and 30-44, Rajasthan reported the highest number of rape cases 2,018 and 789, respectively. The women and girls are under threat not just from strangers but relatives at home. The number of incest rape (98) in Rajasthan was the highest among all states.
Everyone remembers Nirbhaya, a Delhi girl who was gangraped and murdered in 2012, but a similar case in the state three months went unnnotice. A 15-year-old girl in Sikar was so brutally raped that she underwent 20 operations in Jaipur and AIIMS, Delhi. Yet, there was not a whimper of protest from men and women who have taken to the streets for the honour of a queen whose existence is based on a 16thcentury poet’s work of fiction.
The Rajput Karni Sena which is holding statewide protests to fight for the honour of Queen Padmavati, whose alleged indecent depiction in Padmavati film has angered the Rajput community, says it is sensitive towards the wrongs being done to women and girls.
State president of Rajput Karni Sena, Ajit Singh Mamdoli, said, “Yes, we are concerned about these issues as well.”
According to him, the organisation is involved in various activities for upliftment of girls and women but lamented that the media pays attention only when an agitation of this nature is launched.
“We respect all women and stood up and demanded justice for Nirbhaya,” he added.
In Rajasthan, atrocities against girls begin with foeticide. Recently, an Army man in Sikar killed his newborn daughter because he already had a daughter. There were 13 foeticide and 18 infanticide cases in 2015 in the state, according to official figures.
Many girls who survive infanticide are abandoned by parents. “Seventy-seven newborn babies, including 47 girls, who were abandoned just after their birth were rescued between March 2016 and October 2017,” said Devendra Agarwal, state advisor to the government of Rajasthan for Aashray Paalna Sthal Yojana.
The state government was forced to introduce this scheme after alarming rise in such cases. Sex ratio at birth in the state is 887 per thousand in 20015-16, according to the National Family Health Survey-4 .
The girls who are fortunate enough to live in their own home still don’t escape discrimination whether it is access to food, education or health facilities. The desert state has the worst percentage of girls going to school in the 15-17 age group. That’s not all. In most families, boys are sent to private schools while girls are enrolled in government schools. Women literacy stood at 56.1, according to NFHS- 4.
Other social indices like reproductive span, infant mortality rate, sex ratio and age at marriage also point to deplorable condition of women and girls in the state. While, these problems are common to all communities, some are specific to Rajput women.
Chilling Facts
- On average 10 rapes are reported in Rajasthan daily
- 3656 rapes, 4,839 attempts to outrage modesty of women were reported in 2016
- 25.1% married women faced spousal violence (NFHS-4)
- 6.3 per cent of women between 15 and 19 years have already become mothers or have been pregnant once (NFHS - 4)
- 27 per cent women have below normal BMI (NFHS - 4)
