Why blame Rahul Gandhi? Even PM Modi used TRF poll on women's safety to attack UPA II

A lot of hue and cry has been made over a Thomson-Reuters Foundation survey which deems India the most unsafe for women in the world. This has led to a host of reactions including those from BJP leaders and supporters who ‘rejected the survey’.

Union Minister for Women and Child Development (WCD) Maneka Gandhi denounced the Thompson Reuters Foundation poll which proclaimed India as the most dangerous country for women.

Stating that the poll has collected opinions of 548 persons on healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual violence, non-sexual violence and human trafficking, WCD said, "India is far ahead of many countries in most of these areas and has also seen significant improvement in indicators when compared with its own performance in previous years. Therefore, the ranking of India is a surprise and clearly inaccurate."

On the other hand, Opposition leaders used the survey to target the current dispensation. Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue of women's safety, and said it was "a shame" that a survey found India was the world's most dangerous country for women due to the high risk of sexual violence.

 Taking to Twitter, he also poked fun at Modi's fitness video and tagged a news report that said India is the "most dangerous" country to be a woman, citing a survey on the high incidence of rape and violence against women.

While our PM tiptoes around his garden making Yoga videos, India leads Afghanistan, Syria & Saudi Arabia in rape & violence against women. What a shame for our country! https://t.co/Ba8ZiwC0ad

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 26, 2018

"While our PM tiptoes around his garden making Yoga videos, India leads Afghanistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia in rape and violence against women. What a shame for our country!" he tweeted.

BJP MP Poonam Mahajan, writing for Firstpost.com, attacked Rahul Gandhi stating: “Even with these concerns in mind, India certainly is much better for women than many other countries, no matter what Gandhi thinks of his fellow Indians. Slandering crores of fellow countrymen by calling them most dangerous in the world for women, to further his shoot-and-scoot style of politics, is a new low that the Congress president has stooped to.”

However, seven years ago the foundation had done a similar survey which had found the that India was the fourth-most dangerous country in the world. 

In 2013, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi had tweeted: “India is considered 4th most dangerous for women. When will she feel safe & symbol of positivity?”

India is considered 4th most dangerous for women. When will she feel safe & symbol of positivity?

— narendramodi_in (@narendramodi_in) October 2, 2013

Not a good place to be whether at 4 or 1, but hypocrisy has two names- pic.twitter.com/SBbx4LUUHR

— Divya Spandana/Ramya (@divyaspandana) June 27, 2018

While PM Modi hasn’t reacted to the survey that was carried out this time, the Women and Children's Development Ministry and National Commission for Women rejected it.

"The Commission rejects the survey in question. For a nation as big as India, with a population of approximately 1.3 billion, the sample size of the survey is not representative of the country as a whole," said Rekha Sharma. 

"Women are very aware in India of issues and there is no way that we could be ranked number one in such a survey. The countries that have been ranked after India have women who are not even allowed to speak in public," Sharma said, without naming a specific country.

One expects that if the shoe was on the other foot, both the current government and the Opposition members will repeat the same cycle. If there's one constant in politics, it's the fact that more things change, the more they remain the same.

India is the world's most dangerous country followed by war-torn Afghanistan and Syria for women due to the high risk of sexual violence, according to a poll of global experts released today.

Somalia and Saudi Arabia are ranked fourth and fifth respectively in the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of about 550 experts on women's issues.

The poll of 548 people was conducted online, by phone and in person between March 26 and May 4 with an even spread across Europe, Africa, the Americas, South East Asia, South Asia and the Pacific.

"The only Western nation in the top 10 was the US, which ranked joint third when respondents were asked where women were most at risk of sexual violence, harassment and being coerced into sex," according to the foundation.

The poll was a repeat of a survey in 2011 in which Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia were named as the most dangerous countries for women.

The survey asked respondents which five of the 193 UN member states they thought were most dangerous for women and which country was worst in terms of healthcare, economic resources, cultural or traditional practices, sexual violence and harassment, non-sexual violence and human trafficking.

Respondents also ranked India the most dangerous country for women in terms of human trafficking, including sex slavery and domestic servitude, and for customary practices such as forced marriage, stoning and female infanticide, the foundation said in a statement.

With inputs from Thomson-Reuters Foundation