I Think: Parents need to teach their sons better. The media can’t do much
Mehul Rijal, intern, Delhi
I read the Times of India every day. I don’t get the news from TV or radio. I think the news [in the paper] is all right, it’s factual.
Rape and sexual violence are a huge problem. They’re happening every day, every hour. People are gross and their parents need to teach them things.
I think men are responsible for this problem. Their mindset is problematic, but society is responsible too. It starts from a very early age — how they are taught, how limited their mindsets are. So I wouldn’t put all the blame on them. They should be taught about equality and how nobody should be judged on their physical composition.
I don’t think death penalty in the Nirbhaya case is going to prevent future rapes, because it hasn’t worked in other countries. But I have to say that letting off one of the rapists more leniently because he was a juvenile is bulls***. If someone is raping another person so brutally, he can’t be taken as a juvenile.
The protests over this, though, got out of hand. They should be carried out in a way so that nobody is hurt, right? At the end of the day, the safety of the people — in this case, of women — is the point.
I think the media is doing an okay job. They can’t do anything more. They just relay information, they can’t do much about this problem on their own. Their job is to give us the news, that’s it.
The last incident I read about was the Kathua rape and murder. My initial reaction was one of disgust because of the way they brutalised a kid.
If I were a journalist writing about such issues, I’d focus on getting all the information possible. The stories need more heft.
