In the last few
weeks India’s most prestigious medical school, All India Institute of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS), and my alma-mater I might parenthetically add, has been in
the news for all the wrong reasons. Last Friday, a six-year old girl was
brought to the Institute with her throat slit after allegedly being gang-raped
and left to die in a public toilet in Delhi. While the girl is still in coma,
the early medical reports suggest that the little girl had made gallant
attempts to resist her perpetrators.
Only a couple of
weeks ago, AIIMS’ trauma unit admitted a four-year old girl who was locked up
in captivity by her neighbors and gang-raped while she bled and subsequently slipped
into a coma. She was playing outside her slum dwelling where she lived with her
parents—both migrant laborers. While her parents were toiling to make a living,
two male neighbors—also migrant workers—were allegedly getting drunk and
aroused watching porn on their mobile phones. They eventually lured the
four-year into a house and raped her repeatedly over multiple days. Thanks to
the promptness shown by Delhi Police in this instance, the girl was located
within 48 hours of filing the missing-child report and the culprits were
apprehended soon after. Thankfully, the girl’s vital signs are making excellent
progress at The Institute.
Sorry to say, but
the vital signs of India are not doing as well. The country is witnessing an
endemic of girl-child rapes. The recent spate of rapes has been both repulsive
and blood curdling. And the Indian masses are not indifferent to this scourge. They,
too, are frustrated by how little is being achieved through their own ongoing and
relentless protests. Who will change the recalcitrant mindset that allows for
such heinous acts to continue unabated? Where is that imaginative leader who
can jolt our collective moral compass in the right direction so we can all march
forward?
More than at any
other time since independence, India now needs a leader with the requisite selflessness
and moral persuasion. Our political leaders look at the masses as ‘voters’ and
the business leaders as ‘consumers.’ India needs a practical yet imaginative
leader: a cunning yet noble trailblazer. India needs a Mahatma Gandhi---no less.
A leader who will impel the Indian masses to start a new ‘Salt March’ to
eliminate the hackneyed and unjust laws that currently protect the perpetrators
for extended periods under the garb of ‘due process.’ She, or he, will
galvanize the masses to vote political leaders in—solely based on their
contribution and dedication toward the eradication of girl sex-abuse. The
leader will implore the masses to buy products based on a company’s track
record on this issue. Yes, you got it right. The next few election cycles will
have to be based on this single issue. He, or she, will make it totally
cost-prohibitive to ignore the issue of girl sex-abuse for both political and
business elites. People will step in to become ‘mentor-adopters’ to other four,
six and eight-year olds in slums across the nation. So that these girl-children
feel like they belong. So that those potential perpetrators do not eye these
innocent victims as unowned readily-available commodities.
I do not see a
leader in this mold today. With a wish and a prayer, in my heart I hope that I
am wrong.
