The #MeToo campaign is a welcome start, but here's why it is likely to be a failure in India

In April this year, one of my colleagues shared a post where she shared how her younger sister, a minor, was stalked on Facebook. The stalker, who is yet to be arrested, morphed the girl’s face onto naked bodies and threatened to circulate them on the internet. The girl and the father approached the Udaipur police. However, instead of filing a complaint or registering the FIR, they victim shamed the girl and told her to get off social media.

In 2013, the then Tehelka founder and editor Tarun Tejpal was arrested after one of his employees wrote a detailed email to the company staff on how she was sexually assaulted during a company trip to Goa.  

Between the justice that was served in the case of Tarun Tejpal and the 2017 harassment of the minor, there are millions of cases in India highlighting how women are harassed while crossing the street, travelling by public transport, spending time with a ‘close’ relative (in some cases even the parent), or living alone in an apartment complex, as the case of lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha suggests. Some cases are reported, and justice is delivered, but others are ignored.

When Alyssa Milano shared the #MeToo campaign on Sunday, millions of women came out on social media to share their stories of molestation and workplace harassment.

While the move is a start to speak up, is it enough to evoke a reaction? Numbers suggest that of the internet users in India, 71% are men and 29% are women. Again, over 60% of India’s population has no access to internet and rural India has the most number of rapes reported every day, according to National Crime Records Bureau data.

In 2017, a survey by the Indian National Bar Association revealed that 69% of those admitting to sexual harassment at the workplace did not complain about it.

While companies are legally required to have policies in place against prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace, women seldom use them to complain for fear of losing their jobs and also due to the lifelong stigma such a move could entail. Those who finally do gather the courage to act often end up entangled in long-winding legal procedures.

Crimes against women remain largely under-reported in India, despite several gang rapes in recent years that triggered nationwide protests and led to stricter legislation – the most prominent of them being the December 2012 gang-rape and murder of a physiotherapy student that led to the formation of the Nirbhaya Act.

A report in UK’s The Guardian said that 24,923 rapes reported nationwide, 3,035 occurred in the large cities. “The number of reported rapes elsewhere in the country was more than seven times higher (despite some cases arguably going unreported) than the number of those reported in the main cities. But the police seem to be selective about what they investigate,” the report added.

So why are so few rape cases reported? Studies suggest that women report crimes if female police officers are present. In March this year, the government admitted a shortage of women in the force, saying that only 7% of the total police strength in India comprised women.

Secondly, the Indian police is short-staffed. A 2013 Indian Express report said that the rural police in the country did not even meet the 1960 standard, while a revelation in the Lok Sabha in 2016 showed that India was short of half a million police officers across the country.

While the #MeToo is a start in the right direction, it’s a long-winding process before men actually mean that they’re #HereForYou. So don't exactly hold your breath, for a Facebook revolution immediately.