Abuse or use?

Sarita Shah, a Mumbai fashion designer, met the man of her dreams on the internet. Or so she thought. Mohammad Arif was an engineer from Delhi, good-looking and apparently well-to-do.

The two married, and Shah moved to Delhi. But today, all she can remember of her marriage is a year-and-a-half of beatings and extortion, where Arif took lakhs from both her and her family. He forced her to have an abortion, and finally threw her out of the house.

Shah’s case is significant. Around the time her trauma was playing out, the decks were cleared for a long-awaited bill on domestic abuse. The Protection against Domestic Violence Act, passed in September 2005, also touches on all aspects of Shah’s torture and tries to remedy them through law: physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse.

It’s also relevant to an estimated 70 per cent of married women in India, between the 15 and 49 years, who are victims of beating, rape or coerced sex, according to a 2005 United Nation Population Fund report. Despite its implementation in October, the act seems to have made little difference to an increasing incidence of domestic violence in Mumbai.

In shocking back-to-back cases recently, a 60-year-old woman was battered by her 63-year-old husband, and a 23-year-old dancer was raped and beaten up by an ex-boyfriend who broke into her home.

Activists aren’t excited about the new act. “I’m not expecting any miracles,” says Geeta Mahajan, of the National Federation of Indian Women, which handles about 15 new cases every month, up from about 10 five years ago. “No act has been able to impact our society as quickly and effectively as required. Domestic violence is increasing every day.”

It took Kiranjeet Ahluwalia, the subject of the recent Aishwarya Rai-starrer Provoked, years to get justice in the UK, where support systems for abuse are much more in place than India. It clearly won’t be any quicker here. There are many reasons why.

Victims often deny domestic abuse, either to avoid public humiliation, preserve family honour or for fear of being driven out. Most cases go unreported. “When a woman does file a complaint, the police are reluctant to meddle in what they call family matters,” says Bishakha Datta of the group Point of View.

Other support systems are not in place either, adds Haseena Khan of the rights group Awaaz-e-Niswaan. “If the woman is thrown out of her home, often her parents refuse to take her in because they believe she should work her marriage out,” says Khan, pointing to a dismal lack of shelters in Mumbai. “Sometimes an abused woman continues to live with her spouse because she has nowhere to go, especially with kids.”

The new act, while formalising and bringing solutions under one legislation, has its drawbacks. “The act has made it difficult to work,” says lawyer Flavia Agnes of Majlis.

It designates a protection officer to register a victim’s complaint and help her with legal aid and finding shelter in a safehouse. “But this envisages an entire office, with support staff,” says Agnes. “In a resources-crunched government, where will they come from?”

Moreover, the act does not specify the state’s responsibility in providing and running shelters. The understanding is that the protection officer will simply locate and assign victims to safehouses run by NGOs.

All this is in contrast to support for victims abroad. In the US, an estimated three million women are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend every year, while in the UK, Home Office figures say it claims the lives of two women every week. A few years ago, the UK government formed a Domestic Violence National Action Plan to tackle this.

And the US has a host of agencies that provide all kinds of help. India’s first step is the act, and its iffy implications. But it’s a step in the right direction.