When the rape of Delhi shot into the national news, rightfully everyone was enraged. I was also one such and was seething in anger. In the process like all others I too started hating the antiquated justice system of India as well as our social milieu that seem to facilitate the rapist.
Immediately after the rape, one of my FB friends Vyom Sharma posted some statistics on rape after reading which I was perplexed and left it at that. But it did remain in my mind subdued.
Today, the poor girl has died and the entire nation is in mourning. At this point, somehow I felt that I should study the phenomena of rape a little more. I was under the false impression that rape is rampant in India on account of a weak justice system which left offenders unpunished. I also thought that male chauvinism that is prevalent in India has a role to play in that.
So I took up Wikipedia for information on rape and the results were shocking indeed. Please observe the figures below. Absolute numbers do not give a clear picture and the number of rapes per 1 lac population is better:
The first figure in the table below shows the number of cases reported in 2009 and the second shows the figures for 1 lac of population in 2010.
JAPAN 1289 1.1
CANADA 576 1.4
INDIA 22172 1.8
SPAIN 1578 3.4
RUSSIA 1007 3.8
DENMARK 352 6.4
THAILAND 4636 6.7
GERMANY 7724 8.9
FRANCE 10108 16.0
UK 15934 27.0
USA 84767 29.0
BOTSWANA 1865 88.5
Reference-Rape Statistics-- Wikipedia.
The irony is that Denmark which has the highest standard of living in the world and where free sex is practiced has a rape incidence of 6.4 per lac which is more than 3 times that of India.
Similarly in Thailand where sex is used for tourism, the incidence is 6.7 per lac.
Just look at figures for the US, it has an incidence of 29 per lac which is some 14 times that of India. In absolute figures too, the US had over 84,000 rapes in 2009 compared to over 22,000 for India. People would be surprised to know that 10% of the rape victims in the US are male.
Look at the high incidence in UK or France. Development seems to be no indicator to the incidence and neither is equality of women a factor.
Botswana has the highest incidence of rape in the world.
The figures prove that rape is universal and does not confine itself to any one country. Psychologists have to search the reasons for this phenomenon. I am shocked at these figures and I am sure all who see my post would find them equally shocking.
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