‘Every time sexual harassment goes unaddressed, the perpetrator is emboldened’
Journalist Soni Sangwan on rape, reporting, and rural media
Nearly 70 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion population lives in villages, but rural issues — including sexual assaults — receive limited coverage in the mainstream media. “To better the sorry state of this country,” says Soni Sangwan, former consulting editor at Gaon Connection, “it is essential to branch out beyond mainstream media.”
Sangwan has held senior editorial positions at Hindustan Times, CNN-IBN and Headlines Today before she joined Gaon Connection, India’s largest rural media platform. In this interview with NewsTracker, she speaks about mainstream media’s apathy to rural issues and the importance of alternate media in bringing to light issues of concern in villages — among others, rape and sexual violence.
The Indian media’s rural blind spot has led to an under-reporting of rape cases that occur in villages and slums of the country. A study that looked at data published by the Criminal Law Journal shows that between 1983 and 2009, over 80 per cent of the rape cases in high courts and close to 75 per cent of rape cases in the Supreme Court came from rural areas. But the media attention remains focused on cases where the description of the victim resonates with the readers — urban, middle class, and English educated.
The need to make news ‘sale-worthy’ compels journalists to prioritise the urban over the rural. They chase stories that connect with their readers, those who reside within the safe sanctum of their cosmopolitan homes. Incidents that transpire against a rural backdrop fail to connect with the audience the mainstream media primarily targets.
The gravity of the problems faced by rural women is often times understood through stories that are shared through word of mouth. I remember, a relative of mine working in the health-sector in Rajasthan would be approached by women for intrauterine device insertions right before the harvest season. Shockingly, the patients were their young daughters who were beginning work at farms owned by rich, patronising landlords. The women had come to terms with the reality that their daughters were going to get raped. Their hope of seeking appropriate legal remedies had long died.To avoid being socially ostracised by their communities, the little girls had resorted to taking medical precautions to prevent pregnancies.
The onus of sharing such stories and reviving the credibility of democracy’s fourth pillar then falls on the regional media outlets. They have access to local resources, which allows them to delve into the intricacies of the cases. They hold the power to help mobilise the public in situations where the authorities have insufficiently performed their duties.
Every time an act of sexual harassment goes unaddressed by the police, the perpetrator is emboldened to further carry out other brazen acts. When a person who regularly engages in eve-teasing goes unpunished for the offence, he gains the courage to graduate onto the next step — molestation. When a third person who harbours similar malicious intentions watches a culprit face no repercussions, he is reassured that it is easy to escape legal charges.
Gateway crimes should not be ignored and action should be taken to stop sexual assault from stage one. But these crimes continue to be trivialised by Bollywood movies, where stalking is portrayed as a sign of true love.
India’s digital revolution may have just worsened the problem. An increasing number of citizens have now gained access to cheap mobile phones and internet connections. Some phones in rural India come pre-installed with pornographic content that fetishises rape. Even in the Gudiya case that came to light in 2013, the accused claimed that they were watching similar videos on their phones that tempted them to commit the gruesome crime.
Women in rural India find it especially difficult to muster the strength to report such crimes to the authorities. In circumstances where the victims manage to do that, they are subjected to intrusive investigations by the police officials, who tend to show a high disregard for their privacy. This explains the popular lack of confidence in the justice system, with protracted trial proceedings compounding the trauma of the rape survivor.
While working at Gaon Connection, I came across the Ashiana gangrape case where the victim, who had to fight a decade-long battle for justice, echoed the same disbelief in the system. She felt like she had been raped once in the outside world and then raped again 60 times during the course of the investigation and trial when she was obligated to recount the haunting experience on multiple occasions. For the media coverage of sexual violence against women in India to improve, it is necessary to first create a safe and trusting environment for them to report their assault.
The promotion of developmental journalism can also sensitise the Indian readership to the issues that plague rural India. Unlike mainstream media, where the type of story that goes into print is determined by factors ranging from the political leaning of the owners to the marketing strategies undertaken by the media house, development journalism caters to every individual with a rural connect. This includes anybody from a marginalised farmer to a consumer who sources his products from a village. With the advent of technology, digital avenues can now be used to reach a wider audience.
The mainstream media merely scrutinises the latest policy decisions. But the journalism that originates from the villages can paint a true image of how policy decisions have fared in actuality. The dominant narrative overlooks the steps that villages take towards positive change. For instance, the government schools in the countryside of Uttar Pradesh recently introduced sessions to discuss the ideas of good touch and bad touch. Such stories would have been killed by mainstream media.
But it isn’t all gloom and doom. The mainstream media can have tremendous impact when they choose to cover rural stories. This was seen during the trials for the Mathura rape case in 1974. The chilling story of two policemen raping a young tribal girl under the influence of alcohol in the hinterlands of Maharashtra gained public attention after it was extensively reported by the media. The reporting spurred a national conversation about the flaws in the rape law and challenged the long-prevalent culture of victim blaming.
Media can spark such fires. This can then be turned into a campaign with a lasting impact through public support and organisational backing. My message to all the consumers of news in India is this — to be the vehicles of change, to better the sorry state of affairs in the country, it is essential to branch out beyond mainstream media.
This is part of a series of articles that NewsTracker published from 25 November to 10 December as part of the #16Days activism, aligned with the UN’s International Day for Ending Violence Against Women. This piece was published on Day 1.
