HRF/100/04

  17 June  2004

No sound, no fury

National Commission for Women needs to speak louder, clearer

In October 2003, in a step backwards for the rights of women in India, the Supreme Court ruled to allow the arrest of women at any time of the day or the night, without the presence of a female constable “in circumstances where the arresting officer is reasonably satisfied that such presence of a lady constable is not available or possible and/or the delay in arresting caused by securing the presence of a lady constable would impede the course of investigation”.

The decision drew shock and outrage from women’s groups, civil rights activists and human rights groups in India. However, the National Commission for Women (NCW), the voice that was supposed to shout the loudest, remained silent. In the NCW’s newsletter of January 2004, the judgement’s content was briefly explained under the headline: ‘SC: Lady constable not necessary to arrest women.’ It contained not the slightest hint of analysis, let alone a strong critique.

The NCW’s failure to react and act on issues relating to the welfare and the rights of women has now become a chronic condition.

After various discussions, commencing in the 1980s, around the concept of a national institution for women, the NCW came into existence as a statutory body in January 1992, under the National Commission for Act, 1990. The Act specifies the NCW’s main functions as securing that established constitutional and legal safeguards are being complied to, or in case of flaws are recommended for amendment in order to secure women a specific degree of justice and protection. The NCW is also responsible for looking into women’s complaints and conduct studies or investigations in any situation where women’s rights are deprived in any aspect.

More than a dozen years after its establishment, the NCW continues to suffer from both internal and external constraints. Internal constraints chiefly pertain to the NCW’s incompetence in formulating clear suggestions, its failure to speak out against reported atrocities, and its inability to lobby for implementation of its recommendations. External hindrances to its work include the Indian Government’s refusal to implement the NCW’s recommendations and its reluctance to grant the NCW the independence necessary for effective functioning. Independence is an important requirement for any national institution concerned with the protection and promotion of human rights, as laid down in the Paris Principles of National Human Rights Institutions endorsed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the UN General Assembly.

As with the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC), the NCW relies on the Central Government for its funding, which is disbursed as the Government “may think fit for being utilised for the purposes of this Act”. Independence through financial autonomy is thus not secured.

The NCW’s Chairperson and members are nominated by the Central Government, further undermining the NCW’s independence. The politicisation of the appointments has been a bugbear ever since the NCW’s inception, with appointees demonstrating a pronounced political slant. This situation persists. The NCW, for its part, does not appear to be making any significant effort to press for specific amendments to the NCW Act. An Amendment Bill, which was passed in 2000 to modify the 1990 Act, did not tackle these issues in a satisfactory manner.

Further, comprehensive evaluation reports of the NCW by NGOs working on women’s rights are non-existent. Constructive criticism of the NCW is rarely carried out by the media. One of the rare situations where the NCW was openly castigated was in the context of the anti-minority violence of 2002. It was nearly two months after the violence that the NCW deemed it fit to indict the Gujarat Government for ‘failing to perform its constitutional duty’. The NCW’s take on the delay, as reported in the media, was that women “would not have been able to vocalise their plight at the height of the violence”. The patronising tone only served to further diminish any credibility that the NCW may have had as a mechanism for the protection of women’s rights.

Most of the NCW’s study reports include a vast amount of recommendations and suggestions, yet many of these hit a one-way street. In 2002, the NCW published a project report titled ‘Life after Death – A Journey into the Lives of War Widows’, which investigated the status of war widows of the 1971 India-Pakistan war and ‘Operation Vijay’ at Kargil in 1999. The study described in detail the particular cases of 40 widows from five states; each was followed by recommendations. However, there is no evidence that any of these recommendations were followed up or used to lobby the relevant authorities. A well-researched report has thus been rendered useless, and the impression of the NCW as just another ineffectual government agency is reinforced.

The NCW’s ‘recommendations’ are moreover vague, brief and incomplete. Often the formulation is so vague as to practically guarantee non-compliance. With respect to the lack of educational opportunities for Muslim women, for example, the NCW states: “Muslim concentrated institutions need the best teachers, best [sic] facilities and best [sic] infrastructure.” The intention is noble. The chances of realising it? In the absence of concrete recommendations, none.

The formulation acknowledges the problem, but no possible solutions or ideas are provided. Moreover, the aim is not to establish an elite education system for the Muslim community (as the NCW’s formulation appears to suggest), but to ensure justice, increase the community’s chances of securing education and bring about equal treatment for minority groups and girls/women who are often denied access to sound education. In any event, regardless of the formulation, the NCW’s observation is bereft of substance.

The NCW gives the impression of being generally satisfied with the situation of women in India. This is because it demonstrates no outrage and no reasoned criticism of government policies or of social and economic obstacles to the welfare of women. For example, as reported by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), in 1995 only 2,493 cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Uttar Pradesh, out of a total of 15,605, were filed under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. As recently as 2003, The Hindu reported several cases in which people were not paid the compensation due to them under the Act. And the NCW’s reaction? “Not applying the Act to benefit [sic] the women is a violation of the institution of law.” Few could have countered the banality in that statement.

There is no excuse for the NCW’s failure to take effective action. It would do well to take a leaf out of the book of the NHRC, which, while saddled with an enormous caseload and encumbered by a number of internal and external problems, does attempt to express its displeasure when it comes to serious violations of human rights. The NHRC has also, at times, expressed its frustration regarding the limitations to its powers. This is important in a country where Governments are used to setting up statutory bodies and then ignoring them. No such concerns have been expressed by the NCW.

The statement made in 1998 by Mohini Giri, former chairperson of the NCW, still holds true: “The NCW has learnt to stand on its feet, now it must learn to walk.”

India’s newly elected government, for its part, would do well to address the inadequacies of the NCW if it is to demonstrate its commitment to the welfare of women and the protection of women’s rights.

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