Rape capital of India

Times of India, a leading newspaper in India, published the following article about the recent rise in rape cases.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/330_rape_assault_cases_in_Delhi_in_08/articleshow/2994429.cms



581 rape cases in 2007? Just from one city? Surely, this is a sign of moral fiber of the society breaking down! How can we say we are making progress when we see numbers like this?



No way how you look at it, rape is a henious crime. It traumatizes an innocent human being, usually a woman or a young girl. The effects of rape last much longer than the event itself, the scars rarely heal. I am a man and have never been raped, so it is impossible to imagine for me how dreadful it is. So when I talk about the issue, it is purely from the statistical point of view. The contention is that if you have fewer number of henious crimes, that's the sign of progress and civilization. 581 is a huge number. The ideal number is ZERO. I don't want to belittle the individuals involved, and the trauma they went through. But before we conclude that the society is going down the drain, we must ask what were the conditions like earlier. After all progress means better than what was earlier, right?



The biggest reason the numbers you hear nowadays are numbers that are unheard of, is because of the populations involved. We are mentally capable of tracking, imagining people in 10's or at the most 100's. A typical village where everyone knew (almost) everyone else has a size of 100 to 1000. Beyond that we really cannot grasp. When the numbers starts going above 10000, we don't have grasp of what they mean.



Population of Delhi is 14 million on the lower estimates, and 21 million on the higher estimate. Of course, it depends on which parts you include and when you measured. If we take the lower number for conservative estimates, 581 rapes means 1 rape per year in 24,000 people. It is like saying in a village of 1000 people, 1 rape in 24 years. Now we don't have any data for villages in earlier times. But try to imagine yourself living in a village, and hearing statistics about the neighboring village 500 people "you know, in the last 48 years, there have been 1 rape. It's a horrible situation!" What would you say? Would you be as shocked as the Delhi statistics? Of course not. But this is exactly what's happening in Delhi - there are just thousands of villages put together. The consolidation of the statistics gives you a number that is large in absolute sense.



Now some people will say that the number 581 represents just the reported cases, there must be thousands that get hushed up. I agree wholeheartedly. The society has taboos associated with the rape, and punishes the victim. But this has been going on for centuries. In fact there are more and more women now who can come forward now and name the perpetrator, than earlier. Women are lot stronger than they used to be a 100 years ago - they are more educated, more independent, they earn more. Fewer of them have to succumb to the family pressure to hide it and live with the pain.



The process of adding up all the numbers for a crowded city makes a number appear staggering. This did not happen when we knew only about what is happening in our village. In a sense, this is a good thing, because it raises awareness of the population, and forces the authorities to take action. And the actions get taken for long term improvement. It is a slow process, but it does work. Some as a direct result of a law or an initiative (like the seat belt laws reducing the number of deaths per passenger mile). Some changes happen as a result of general improvements in education, health, communicaiton, technology etc. The slow changes are difficult to see, and we start taking them for granted. But they are there.