IBNLive Reader Himanshi Gambhir has sent this write-up to express her protest and indignation over the scourge of eve-teasing that many like her encounter in their lives everyday.
Eve- teasing is a monster which every girl of India has faced at some stage of life or other. Right from the time a girl, doesn't even know the meaning of eve-teasing to the time when she is a grandmother, she has lived with this evil.
It's hard to accept but the situation hasn't changed even after 60 years of independence.
A girl still can't enjoy her basic right — the freedom to move freely, fearlessly and safely on road, forget about equality and empowerment.
And this phenomenon is a commonplace on roads. This is the major reason why too many women are not joining professional colleges and hence top jobs. Many parents simply can't let their daughters go out freely in this patriarchal, chauvinist society and tend to be over-protective.
More importantly, when this devil is faced by kids below teens, it turns more dangerous as they tend to get scared. Everyone knows what happened to the Mumbai girl who was teased by four men on a jeep. Apart from the risk of physical injuries, more haunting is the trauma associated with it.
Ironically, this fear is instilled in our minds when we our young mothers try to persuade us to ignore such incidents. I feel girls should be trained physically to handle such incidents by teaching them ways and means for self-defence (like karate). And such courses should be integrated with school education.
There should be strictest legal punishment for the culprits. And for heaven's sake, mothers should stop instilling fear in the young minds. Rather, they should motivate them to fight for their rights and live their lives with dignity.
A nation that cannot ensure security for women, especially the future generation, is as good as a dead and has no scope for sustainable development.
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