In the dark about online abuse

For every triumph that the Internet presents, especially to women, it is important to remember the threats it poses. There have been several comparisons made between online and street-style harassment, but since the Internet comes aided with the mask of anonymity, harassment in many cases online is magnified.

For instance, the possibility of a ‘dick pic’ landing in one’s mailbox is more than having a man actually unzip in front of you in a street corner. The Internet is a disturbing space, where the violence permeates into your real life with debilitating consequences. Last year, The Ken carried a disturbing story about how, for years, a woman called Sneha, and her husband Rahul, were plagued by fake profiles on Facebook that were inundated with abusive messages. The extent of the abuse was such that several fake profiles of family members and relatives mushroomed, and both Sneha and Rahul even lost jobs. The abuse still continues.

In India, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act offered a bit of respite to women who face any form of harassment online. Yet, police officials in the cyber cells of several states, still believe that lesser online engagement will invite less trouble. This is akin to the thought that modest clothing will prevent rape or molestation. A few years ago, when a food critic faced a heap of abuse on Twitter, she decided to register a police complaint. She later told DNA that the police officials she spoke to did not know how Facebook or Twitter functioned.

There are few central government schemes that seek to tackle online abuse. Last year, the ministry made it mandatory for matrimonial websites to register users with a valid ID proof, keep logs of access and maintain a helpline to counter the several complaints from women. The Women and Child Development (WCD) minister Maneka Gandhi last year had reportedly been made aware of the problem by a scribe who faced some form of abuse on a matrimonial site.

The WCD ministry also spoke to Twitter and Facebook later last year to bring out safe practices to curb abuse. Another scheme that the government came up with last year is the E-Box, where schoolchildren can post anonymous complaints online. Yet, the critique that mobile phones are not accessible to very schoolchild is long lost on the minister. Following the arrest of a 38-year-old paedophile in Delhi early this month, the ministry announced an alliance to combat child porn, roping in several ministries and stakeholders.

The ministry is also involved in another scheme with the home ministry: the Cyber Crime Prevention against Women and Children (CCPWC) scheme, green-lighted under the Nirbhaya Fund. The idea was to build a portal where women can complain, which would then be tackled by the home ministry. In over a year, though, there has been no word on the scheme. And, according to government officials, the home ministry is still groping in the dark about it.

Last year, during a conference in Mumbai called ‘Imagine a Feminist Internet’, there was this realisation among the participants that, today, a mobile phone offers several self-defence tools at the tip of your hand. There are now panic buttons on taxi apps, apart from physical buttons. GPS-linked safety alarm apps ensure that someone is tracking where you are headed. Shake a phone, and a nearby emergency unit will be alerted. So, a mobile phone today is a pepper spray, safety pin and a phone all rolled into one.

In another conversation during the same conference, an online rights organisation threw up a startling discovery from ongoing research in Uttar Pradesh on the ban imposed by the khap panchayats on the use of mobile phone by young girls. Apparentely, some of these girls would make their boyfriends buy them mobile phones to use on the sly. That these young girls were not going to let anyone snatch away their agency to communicate is inspiring.

The author covers gender for DNA and tweets @visually_kei