The calculations women make

A string of sexual assault and harassment cases in India over the past few weeks has led to a familiar cycle of outrage: protests, marches, television debates, social media campaigns, and demands for accountability. Reporting on these cases, I have found myself thinking about the calculations women constantly make to remain safe.

While reporting on the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old at Astha Kunj Park in south Delhi last month, I spent hours speaking to students, women, and residents. On September 23, students of Lady Shri Ram College for Women and Delhi University held a women-only march to raise concerns about safety. By 6.30 p.m., I was walking back from the march towards Nehru Place metro station, barely 650 metres away. About 200 m from where the march had ended, a man standing on the footpath looked me straight in the eye and began touching himself.

I could still hear the slogans behind me — “azadi, azadi” — growing louder. Police personnel were on the streets, “managing” the protest.

I kept walking.

Earlier that day, the women I spoke to said harassment on the roads was hardly unusual. “Men often engage in obscene sexual behaviour near Moolchand metro station and on the road towards college. This not only scared me, but also my family. They bought me a car so I can avoid travelling through these stretches,” a student said. Some students avoid going to this metro station altogether and take a 10-minute auto ride to get to another station.

Women journalists make similar calculations. When I first had to go for a meeting with a police officer in Delhi, I wore jeans, boots, and a top. “If you go like this, they will think you are too fashionable and it might be a distraction for them,” a colleague told me. “Wear something Indian.” Another said, “Sleeveless will not look good.” Since then, what I wear to work has sometimes depended on whether I have a meeting with a police officer.

Last month, when a building collapsed in Satya Niketan, killing seven people, I was at the site until 11.30 p.m. I was repeatedly told, “You should go home. It is late.” Later, beneath the Durgabai Deshmukh South Campus metro station, where 150-200 students had gathered, I weighed the importance of the story against the risk of travelling alone at night. The apprehension did not feel misplaced: around midnight, another man exposed himself in front of me at a metro station.

Over the past week, as protests demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner unfolded in Delhi, I faced a familiar dilemma. When a situation escalated, should I move towards the crowd to document a detention or stay back and risk missing the moment? “Madam, aap door hatt jayiye (Madam, please stay at a distance)” was a common refrain.

Several protesters and detainees, including journalists, alleged that they had been manhandled; police personnel, in some instances, explained that physical force became “necessary” when people refused to move. A woman police officer told me that demonstrators sometimes refused to get up when asked to leave, forcing personnel to lift them. On ground, the line between what is dismissed as an inevitable part of crowd control and what a person experiences as physical intimidation can become difficult to establish.

A photojournalist based out of Gujarat, who had been considering coming to Delhi to cover the protests after seeing their scale, found herself hesitating over a question that seemed painfully basic: “Is it safe to go to protests alone?”

When I decided to pursue journalism in 2020, leaving behind what was considered a dream job for an engineering graduate, my mother worried that the profession was not safe for a woman. Six years later, when she hears me talk about crime scenes and late-night assignments, I realise how little that fear has changed. I have another story to chase, another call to make. She, on the other hand, has only one question for me after every assignment: Did you get home safely?

lavpreet.kaur@thehindu.co.in