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Violence Against Women in Delhi: A Sustainability Problematic

Yamini Narayanan JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN DEVELOPMENT 2012 7: 1 DOI: 10.1177/097317411200700101 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sad.sagepub.com/content/7/1/1

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Article

Violence Against Women in Delhi: A Sustainability Problematic

Yamini Narayanan

Journal of South Asian Development 7(1) 122 2012 SaGE Publications India Private Limited SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/097317411200700101 http://sad.sagepub.com

Abstract Violence against women (VAW) has traditionally been of concern to feminists and cultural sociologists, and in recent decades, has also begun to be diagnosed and understood as a development problem. However, 20 women practitioners and scholars of development in Delhi have raised this issue explicitly as a sustainability problem while referring to the high rate of gender violence in the citys public spaces. Sustainability is one of the most problematic political notions and scholars have been justifiably concerned that it has been hijacked to legitimise a variety of agendas, including unsustainable ones that contravene principles of social justice. However, it is also a compelling and powerful political concept and therefore, it is important to reconceptualise and reclaim from a feminist perspective, and from within the theoretical and empirical framework of equity, one of the central tenets of sustainability, and social justice. Therefore in this article, employing the primary research from Delhi, I use the notion of equity to frame the VAW in the city as a sustainability problemthe lack of which has an impact on urban design, which can constrain a citys capacity to be sustainable. Keywords Violence, women, Delhi, sustainability, equity, urban design

Introduction
In this article, I frame and problematise the issue of violence against women (VAW) as explicitly a problem of sustainable development, and in the context of the article, show that it constrains urban sustainability. I present this argument based on interviews with 20 women development practitioners and scholars from the city of Delhi, India. In these interviews, I was specifically interested to know what these women considered some of the major challenges to the sustainable
Yamini Narayanan, Lecturer in International and Community Development, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Australia. Email: y.narayanan@deakin.edu.au

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Yamini Narayanan

urban development of Delhi. The issue of VAW in the citys public spaces was repeatedly identified as one of the biggest challenges to urban sustainability. Delhi has the dubious distinction of ranking the highest of any Indian megalopolis in its crime rate against women. The interviewees were well versed in the notion and practice of sustainable development, and spoke of this issue as a sustainability problem. VAW is one of the most prominent issues in Indian feminist scholarship, and typically is either addressed by activist-scholars lobbying for social and political change, or academic scholars delving into the historical or sociological dimensions of the issue (Purkayastha et al. 2003). In 1993, the UN-approved Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (UNFPA, undated, para 6) defined VAW as Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life. In the Indian context, issues such as female infanticide and foeticide, maternal mortality and malnourishment may also be viewed as acts of violence against women (Bhatt 1995). The development effects of the latter issues have been extensively researched (Dreze and Sen 1990; Sen 1999); however, it is issues of physical violence such as rape, beatings and murder that have evaded substantial study as development issues or as sustainability problems, and as such, will be the focus of my paper. In the context of this article, cities are also critical sites to link sustainable development and gender violence: 75 per cent of the global population are projected to be urban citizens by 2030 (UN-HABITAT 2001). Cities are major sites for the successful achievement (or not) of the eight Millennium Development Goals, one of which aims to halve absolute poverty in the developing world by 2015. Four of these goals directly pertain to women, emphasising that gender justice and gender equality are critical precursors to global development. This makes gender violence in cities one of the most important development priorities to address. Delhi, already a megacity with a population of more than 15 million will soon become a hypercity (cities with a population of 20 million and above) with a projected population of 24 million by 2021 (Delhi Master Plan 2011). In addition, no less than a million people travel to Delhi every single day for work from growing satellite city adjuncts such as NOIDA, Dwarka, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad (Jain 2001). If these adjoining satellite townships, as part of the citys metropolitan area, were to be included in an estimation of the citys population, the numbers would be well beyond the 30 million mark by 2021, making Delhi a supercity (cities with a population of 30 million and above). The population ratio of men to women in the capital in the 2001 census was 827:1000, while the national ratio was 933:1000 (Census of India 2001). Delhis skewed sex ratio is largely due to male-dominated migration to the city, as well as female foeticide and infanticide (Siddiqui et al. 2004).

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 3 Framing a problem as such (or not) is a critical political issue, and these interpretive frames are important in the way that society understands issues as problems and responds to them. Tversky and Kahneman (1981) have demonstrated that the way a problem is framed and presented has consequences in the way that the issue is managed and resolved. The call for sustainability is arguably one of the greatest ecological, social and political emergencies of our time and evokes more political and policy attention than most other issues. Sustainability is a fuzzy concept (Markusen 2003: 702), and yet it is inherently valuable (Neuman 2005). Nevertheless, how can we begin to conceptualise sustainable development from the perspective of women? Women have historically and even currently been severely impacted by gender-neutral and gender-insensitive ways of planning and implementing development, so the framework of gendered sustainable development deserves close scrutiny. Mainstream development typically implies a series of negative outcomes for women in terms of restrictions imposed on their liberty and health (Shiva 1994); it may thus be useful to identify the removal of limitationssuch as threats to their physical and psychological health, safety and security, choices regarding childbirth, right to education and employment, and complete civil and political rights as gendered sustainable development. Any threat to these rights and libertiesincluding physical violencemay thus be considered a problem of sustainable development. It is unthinkable to avoid the use of sustainable development in development planning and policy because typically sustainable development is declared as the ultimate planning goal (Briassoulis 1999: 889). This article argues that viewing the issue of violence against women as an explicit sustainability problem might allow pragmatic policy solutions and methods to be implemented more urgently and effectively.1 It may also enable sustainability in policy to be understood and implemented more clearly in terms of equity and gender justice.

Overview of Violence Against Women in Delhi

In 2004, the Delhi police reported that at least one woman is raped every 24 hours in the national capital (The Times of India 2004). A report by the Delhi Commission for Women (1997) observes that women and girls of lower socio-economic groups are more vulnerable to rape though even the protection that is afforded to middle-class women seems flimsy at best. According to the National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB 2007), Delhi records the highest number of crimes against women, in both the public and private spheres. Of the megalopolises, Delhi accounted for 29.5 per cent of rape cases, 31.8 per cent of kidnapping and abduction cases...and 21.5 per cent of molestation cases thus making it the top offending city among the 35 large cities surveyed by the NCRB in 2007.

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While Delhi ranks the highest of all Indian cities in other crimes against women, including dowry deaths, domestic violence and psychological torture, rape, abduction and molestation occur frequently in the citys public spaces, accounting in fact for a large proportion of reported crime in the city. Furthermore, Delhi also stands out as the top city in terms of violence against children and the elderly (NCRB 2007), which makes their safety in public spaces even less assured. A UNIFEM initiative on Global Safe Cities for Women (UNIFEM 2011) notes that Women living in New Delhi experience high levels of insecurity and harassment in buses, on streets and in other public spaces, and eve teasing of women and girls is all too common. Exact figures are hard to source; the UN Womens Report (2011) further adds:
Though a universal phenomenon, especially relevant in a globalized and urbanizing world, sexual violence against women and girls in public spaces is largely unrecognized and ignored by policies, programmes and budgets. The dearth of reliable, specific and comparable data also contributes to this problem and the lack of public and political attention that it requires.

In a recent survey taken by the Centre for Equity and Inclusion (CEQUIN) and the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) in 2009, 96 per cent of the 630 women interviewed between the ages of 12 and 55 across socio-economic demography from both New and Old Delhi emphasised that they especially feel threatened in the popular markets of Chandni Chowk, Connaught Place and Karol Bagh as well as in the public buses (Indo-Asian News Service 2009). One of the more disturbing revelations of the survey further elaborates that 60 per cent of these women are most concerned about the safety of girls less than 10 years of age, and 88 per cent were clear that public buses are the most unsafe mode of transport in the national capital. Additionally, the report says that 88 per cent of the women felt that they seldom received assistance or protection from bystanders and other members of the civic community should they be harassed or attacked in the citys public spaces. The women are also highly reluctant to trust the Delhi police from whom they expect further sexual harassment (Indo-Asian News Service 2009). Delhis urban planning designor lack thereofis increasingly recognised as a key reason in enabling such crime. Ranjana Kumari, the director of Centre for Social Research notes that only 37 per cent of the city was formally planned (Burke 2011). Jason Burke writes in The Guardian (2011):
Over the past thousand years the centre of Delhi has been displaced nearly a dozen times. In recent decades, there has been almost no planning of its extraordinary, exponential growth. The result is a mess, insufficiently uniform to be a labyrinth, too varied to be described as an urban jungle. Instead, Delhi is a series of independent clustersof families, of trades, of communities, of wealth and povertysplit by major roads that are impossible to cross due to their chaotic traffic.

Due to this lack of democratic, equitable urban planning, women are the first victims of gender-insensitive or gender-neutral ways of ad hoc development. Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 5 For Baxi (2003), the urban environment in Delhi presents a constant fear of physical danger for women. Travelling through the city of Delhi on foot, by public transport or personal vehicles has always been fraught with sexual danger, she writes. Baxi declares (2003: paragraph 9), What adds to the viciousness of the city is that the urban environment lends itself to creating a rapacious city. Baxi (2003) laments that even the new public development programmes in Delhi do not consider womens unique requirements of urban planning. Lack of physical amenities such as adequate street lighting, clean, wide roads, safe pedestrian access and effective surveillance, all specifically increase womens vulnerability. She writes (2003: paragraph 3):
Each time a slum is demolished and large numbers of people relocated, the issue of the safety of women and girls is neither seriously debated nor considered. When a mall, subway or a multiplex cinema is built, the idea that the urban environment should facilitate rather than impede the safety of women is not given any attention. Even when the Delhi Metro blueprint was being prepared, it did not take into account the increased vulnerabilities for women caused during its execution or by the change in bus routes.

While women-friendly urban planning will not fully eliminate crime against women in the city, deterrence is unarguably key to its resolution. However, Baxi (2003: paragraph 7) notes:
The physical and material attention to the planning of urban spaces is not friendly to women in very basic ways. The Delhi University campus, for instance, is one such sexualised zone, which is marked by state license to rape or harass women. There is total or near total absence of traffic regulation or surveillance by the police, and inaction when a complaint is lodged. If there are no lights, if there are pot holes, broken pavements, and billboards in the middle of pavements, it makes resistance to sexual harassment on the street all the more difficult.

Furthermore, Delhis rapists particularly operate in moving cars. The citys moral codes and social norms do not encourage even physical demonstration of affection; as such, all physical contact, including rape, is conducted inside the private and inaccessible confines of a moving car. However, vital deterrence measures in the landscape surrounding the car are almost entirely missing. Baxi (2003: paragraph 8) says, If there are no preventive measures set up in parking lots and other such public spaces, it adds to the conditions of criminality. If there is no traffic regulation, it allows men to stalk women in cars and abduct them. However, increasing surveillance itself is stepping into dangerous territory as the image of the Delhi police, in the eyes of the citys women, is grotesque and fearsome. The police constable is classified as semi-skilled labour on the Indian government pay scales (Burke 2011). Frequent news reports of police involvement in rape and torture, artificial delays in registering a case and negligible follow-up of crime and prosecution has resulted in widespread mistrust, and even fear, of the police force (Hindustan Times 2006). Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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In an effort to address the issue of womens safety in cities, the UNIFEM sponsored Global Safe Cities for Women project has chosen five of the highest crime capital citiesincluding Delhito commit government and international resources to address the issue. The UNIFEM Report (2011) clarifies that in Delhi:
The project will focus on needed policy and legislative reforms; urban planning and design of public spaces; civic awareness; improvements in public transport and policing; provision and maintenance of public infrastructure and services; and expanding access of survivors to legal assistance, justice and other supports.

Delhis Master Plan 2021 emphasises sustainable urban design but articulates this mostly in terms of ecological sustainability. While this is undoubtedly critical, the citys urban designers need to explicitly link gender violence to sustainable urban development, and emphasise rape prevention as a priority for a sustainable city. Historically however, rape (and other forms of violence against women) has been viewed as a womens issue rather than an institutional concern.

Historical Framing of Violence Against Women in India

Extensive research on VAW in India has been undertaken from a variety of perspectives. I provide here a brief overview of this historical framing of the issue, which has been primarily undertaken by social activists and the academic community. This context is useful to clearly delineate the case for understanding VAW as a sustainability problem. The scholars in social activism movements have written most extensively on dowry deaths,2 a form of gender violence that is particular to south Asia, and violence against lower caste women by upper caste men (Purkayastha et al. 2003: 514). Madhu Kishwars journal Manushi is an excellent example of such work (though Kishwar [1999] herself renounces the label feminist and expresses a horror of isms, including feminism). Such works reflect on the status of women in India and suggest pragmatic social, political and legal changes to allow for greater empowerment of women (Purkayastha et al. 2003: 515). On the other hand, academic researchers on women and violence take on a more feminist perspective and focus on the cultural and structural context of violence and explain violence as a patriarchal Indian societysmethod of controlling women who have subordinate status (Purkayastha et al. 2003: 517). Such studies examine the religio-cultural sanctions that are argued to legitimise violence against women (Rao 2005; Sathyamurthy 1998), the fierce conflict over inheritance laws and property rights (Kishwar 1999), and the continued phenomenon of boy-preference, which combined with consumerism and technologisation, is practised with the help of sophisticated sex-determination tests and medical termination of pregnancies when the foetus is determined to be a girl. The clearest Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 7 manner in which gender violence has been linked to development, however, may be seen in the work of scholar-activists such as Vandana Shiva (1988, 1991, 1994), who has written extensively about the violent effects of globalisation, technological imperialism, and the corporate destruction of traditional lifestyles and natural ecology on women, especially tribal women. I am interested in the way that physical battering of women is framed and presented, and am concerned that physical violence, with its main preoccupation with the status of women (Purkayastha et al. 2003), continues to be presented as a womens issue. While it is true that this issue has the most immediate and substantial impact on women, framing it as a sustainability problem has the advantage of including the larger community in the analysis, while examining some of the causes of violence, the impact and the framing of solutions. This may also offer more impetus for the problem to be addressed and solutions to be implemented at a policy level. This is explored in the ensuing section, which demonstrates how VAW is a sustainability concern, in the context of both equity and its impact on urban design.

Violence Against Women as a Sustainability Problem

Equity is one of the central concerns of sustainable development, and the Brundtland Commission (1987) spends much time emphasising the importance of intergenerational and intra-generational equity, particularly as regards future generations inheriting clean environments, and economic equity. Amazingly, the report is silent on gender equitywomens issues continue to be viewed largely in the context of population control and their role in agriculture. Yet equity, in the context of sustainability must be related to issues of gender justice (Kelly et al. 2005). It must necessarily extend itself to ensuring the safety of women, children and citizens of other minority groups. The CEDAW recognised that violence against women is an obstacle to equality, development and peace and that the opportunities for women to attain legal, social economic and political equality are constantly being limited by violence (UMP 2000). According to the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in 1995:
Violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of equality, development and peace. Violence against women both violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. The long-standing failure to protect and promote those rights and freedoms in the case of violence against women is a matter of concern to all States and should be addressed. (paragraph 112)

Viewed in this context, crime prevention becomes one of the most important sustainability initiatives to sustain societies that are healthy and safe places to live Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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(Kelly et al. 2005). Kelly et al. (2005) in fact argue that sustainability provides a more realistic framework than traditional approaches to address the issue of crime in the community. The traditional approaches, which were project-oriented and non-integrated, failed for much the same reasons that traditional economic growth failed: it removed itself from the complexities of social realities (Kelly et al. 2005: 309). Sustainability offers an alternative framework to crime prevention: one that attends to equity concernsinclude[s] an appropriate and flexible definition of community, bottom-up decision-making, a recognition and respect for diversity, and a particularistic orientation directed towards meeting the needs of the local community (Kelly et al. 2005: 311). A number of the factors that make women vulnerable to assault and other crime are related to various aspects of sustainability, for example, urban design. UNHABITATs Safer Cities Programme (SCP), one of the prominent programmes on urban development and gender, notes that most cities follow a modernistic approach to urban design, which prioritises aesthetic appearance, high-rise buildings and free-flowing and hierarchical vehicular traffic (UN-HABITAT 2007). It notes that such urban design fails to accommodate the specific needs of the growing numbers of poor and uniquely affected groups such as women. It argues that a safe city for women would be safe for everyone. Ironically, Delhis Master Plan 2021 (Delhi Master Plan 2011: 8384), an ambitious preparation for the coming decade, is characterised by precisely such modernistic goals: visual integration of the city; policy for tall buildings; policy on unhindered access movement, parking and pedestrian realm; policy on hoardings, street furniture and signages; and policy for design of pedestrian realm. Even the objectives regarding pedestrian spaces remain strictly gender-neutral. Incredibly, nowhere in the document is there any note of womens particular needs of Delhi city at alland Delhis violent crime rate against women, the highest in the country, does not merit even a mention in the latest master plan for the development of the city. However, women often consider urban communities to be rapacious environments and the feminist geographer Gill Valentine (1992: 27) calls this a spatial expression of patriarchy, since it reflects and reinforces the traditional notion that women belong, and are safer, at home, not in the streets. Domosh and Seager (2001) further observe that though women probably experience even greater violence in the private confines of their homes, it is the spaces clearly defined as public that they fear most. Domosh and Seager write (2001: 100): Research demonstrates that this fear of public spaces is true for women of all socioeconomic classes, ages and stages in the life cycle. Feminist analyses of gender-based crime view public spaces as sexualised zones that are seen as permissible spaces (Baxi 2003: paragraph 5) or as gendered spaces (Domosh and Seager 2001: 44). They call for a redesign of the urban environment (for example, better street lighting), to be more sensitive to womens safety. The UN-HABITAT report (2007) notes for instance, that urban Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 9 design has a direct impact on the reduction or increase of assaults and crime in urban spaces. Specifically, it notes (2007: 3):
Women are generally more aware of those aspects of the built environment that can offer opportunities for crime and criminals and more sensitive to risks and insecurity. For this reason, utilising womens perceptions and experiences in urban design and planning can greatly enhance overall community safety.

In keeping with this conclusion, the UN-HABITAT developed the concept of Womens Safety Audits within the SCP, to understand publics perception of safety in their local urban area. The concept works on the premise that if women consider the space safe, then it is safe for everyone, since women have the highest fear of violence in urban areas (UN-HABITAT 2007). The report says (UNHABITAT 2007: 3):
Without proper knowledge of these public perceptions and experiences, social and physical planners cannot theorize why crime happens, politicians cannot formulate, prioritize and implement strategic policies and professionals cannot combat (fear of) crime itself. It is a powerful tool for change, bringing an entire community together.

These are more effective strategies than top-down state-initiated approaches to making public spaces unattractive for criminal activity (Kelly et al. 2005). Kelly et al. (2005) believe that examining what social sustainability means to the local community and how it may be brought about is vital to crime prevention. They quote Podolefsky (1985: 33), [the] introduction of structured programs and bureaucratic procedures in the absence of social solidarity is likely to produce indifference, suspicion or outright hostility. Podolefskys concerns are worth examining on two counts. First, it is correct that social solidarity is important because in a culturally diverse city such as Delhi, numerous complex social issues are directly related to crimes against women. In her study on the perspectives of the Indian middle classes response to the rape issue in Delhi, Jyoti Puri (2006) makes a pertinent observation that racist stereotypes revolve around the victim of such crimes. Kern (2005: 357) notes likewise, that womens sense of confidence, belonging and the ability to distance oneself from violence are strongly related to race and class. This makes it more difficult for women of certain ethnic backgrounds to receive justice and sympathy. There are, for instance, harsh stereotypes about women from the seven northeastern states of India who are represented as being too Westernised and promiscuous in their behaviour and clothing, and who tend to stay out later at night as compared to other Indian women3 (Puri 2006). Puri goes on to note that in general discourse, even among the educated middle class, it is often automatically assumed that women from these states, particularly those who get raped or otherwise attacked late at night, must be soliciting sex.

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Likewise, the perpetrators of such crimes also typically belong to clear sections of the population. The NCRB (2007) reports that of the accused persons arrested in cases of rape, 83 per cent were illiterate or school dropouts, 67 per cent were below 25 years of age and 68 per cent belonged to the low economic classes. This immediately raises obvious issues of education, employment opportunities and income as vital markers of a safe and sustainable society. Furthermore, from their study on community approaches to crime prevention, Kelly et al. (2005) note that state intervention against crime is necessary, in terms of resources, funding and correctional services; however, it has to work in partnership with sustainable community development. This is because the cause of general crime can be traced back to reasons such as poverty, racism, unemployment, poor housing and the lack of appropriate social, educational and recreational opportunities (Kelly et al. 2005: 311). Once the community itself is mobilised to respond to issues of crime and victimisation, then the subsequent responses must become enmeshed in the social fabric if they are to be sustainable (Kelly et al. 2005: 321). Adopting forms of deliberative democracy, which seek fair representation of all stakeholders and facilitate discussion and negotiations between and among citizens, are likely to be more invested in the social development and ecological preservation of the common space (Hartz-Karp and Briand 2009). In this way, specific social issues, many of which may even be regarded as belonging to the private or domestic realm, become community concerns, important enough to motivate a transformation in social behaviour. However, even Kelly et al.s (2005) sustainability analysis of crime is inadequate for genderbased crime as it stands. This is because, secondly, in a city like Delhi, Podolefskys concern about state-initiated approaches is even more complex and problematic. The Indian police itself are almost singularly distrusted as being deeply involved in criminal activity themselves. The Times of India, a leading English national daily has made note several times of the criminal records of the citys police force. Puri (2006: 139140) writes:
Perceptions of an insensitive police force, fears of reliving the violence through a hostile judicial process, trauma imposed by a culture that taints rape victims and dread of dishonouring the family are among the reasons that women will not report sexual assaults in the vast number of cases.

An article considered it noteworthy that one young college girl actually did file an FIR (first information report) after being gang-raped in Dhaula Kuan in south Delhi, and described her as an intelligent, brave and sharp girl (The Times of India 2005). The Delhi polices slogan With you, For you, Always has woefully failed the citys women (Puri 2006). Furthermore, the literature suggests that the state response to gender-based violence is weak. Mortisugu writes (2007: 88):
Law enforcement [in Delhi] is beset with a familiar set of problems: bribery of underpaid officers, police ties to organized crime and corrupt politicians, and officers

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 11

frequent refusals to file crime reports and launch investigations, because doing so would add to the crime figures in their jurisdictions.

The criminalisation of the Indian police force is also a reason for the publics unwillingness to undertake powerful public protests and action. The NCRB (2007) describes the apathy as well as the reluctance of onlookers and eyewitnesses in getting involved with what would inevitably become a police case, or their fear of being victimised in turn. The National Institute of Public Cooperation Child Development survey in 2006, commissioned by the Delhi police, reported that 68 per cent of spectators do not act and are non-responsive in a situation of public harassment of women (ESCAP and UN-HABITAT 2010). Safety and nonviolence must necessarily be cornerstones of a sustainable society, which maximises the positive participation, growth and contribution of women. The yearning for a non-violent society, and its absence was emphatically raised in my interviews with the women development scholars and practitioners in Delhi during our specific discussions about the citys sustainability challenges. The sections below provide an overview of the rationale for selecting female respondents to speak on issues of urban sustainability in Delhi, and research methods and analysis employed. The themes of violence and their impact on womens participation and empowerment as sustainability issues are clearly delineated in the primary data in this article.

Methods: Setting the Agenda and Interviews

I chose to interview women in trying to understand the major challenges to development in Delhi because of the strategic importance of a gender perspective on development issues in India, particularly during a time of rapid modernisation. In focusing on women, I do not mean to negate the male perspective on these issues; indeed, I believe that achieving a gender balance in sustainability planning and implementation is vital to its success. However, the distinctive voices of women have often been either stereotyped or viewed as add-ons in development studies despite being vitally relevant in these aspects. There are both general and specific reasons to focus on womens perspectives on sustainable development. Anand (1992: 1) defines a gender perspective as one in which womens knowledge, experiences and perceptions are given validity and allowed to come to the fore in analysing and presenting issues. My case for presenting VAW as a sustainability issue is informed by this viewpoint, which allows womens views and experiences to centrally inform urban development planning and implementation. I argue that this allows gender to be understood as a participative, rather than a reactive, element and where gender is a major category of analysis while conceptualising as well as implementing policy. Feminist scholars also argue that womens perspectives may be important for a number of reasons. Hardings definition (1989: 93) of standpoint or feminist Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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successor science has the premise that women (or feminists) are able to use political struggle and analysis to provide a less partial, less defensive, less perverse understanding of human social relationsincluding our relations with nature. The interviews with women from Delhi contributed in foregrounding without bias, issues critical to the overall sustainability of the city, which were otherwise being neglected in every major policy document on Delhis development. Similarly, Tedlock (2000: 466) argues that it is important to take into account womens binary view or double consciousness, which gives women a certain advantage in understanding oppressed people worldwide. This is important to attend to the complexities that have to be understood, acknowledged and reconciled to achieve sustainability.

Interviews and Analysis

To select the women and structure the interviews, I used ethnographer James Spradleys (1979) guidelines for qualitative interviews. Spradleys key injunctions are that the informant should ideally be thoroughly enculturated and be currently involved in the cultural scene from which information is sought. Spradley also requires that the researcher be as thoroughly unenculturated as possible; however, I am a native researcher, and was able to overcome this problem by selecting, as per Spradleys advice, women whose expertise and experience in development practice is widely regarded and superior to my own. Incidentally, feminist researchers such as Stanley and Wise (1983) argue that native researchers have an enormous advantage over foreign interviewers because they are more readily able to interpret meaning in qualitative research. The 20 women were carefully selected. I first approached some prominent women scholars and practitioners of development in the city, who then referred me on to other women interviewees, enabling a snowballing sampling technique. At the point of saturation, the interviews were concluded. The interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes and allowed the women to speak reflexively, even as it followed a semi-structured format of questions. The women have been identified as Respondent 1, Respondent 2 and so forth, along with a brief description of their context in development work. This is because while some of the interviewees were happy to be identified by name and affiliation, others did not give me this permission. Identifying them thus is a way of presenting their views in a uniform manner. I had approval from Murdoch Universitys Human Research Ethics Committee to carry out the interviews. I started by asking them for their understanding of sustainable development, particularly from a feminist and an urban development perspective. Following this, I asked the women to identify what issues they considered to be some of the greatest challenges to Delhis sustainable development. VAW in the city was one issue that each of the 20 women independently raised as one such major challenge. These women spoke entirely out of their own Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 13 unique background, even though the questions addressed to them were broadly the same and the women were allowed to recount their experiences, understandings and expectations from the starting point that they perceived was immediately important to them. I employed the domain method of analysis to identify the major themes that arose in the interviews. The identification of such categories relies substantially on the researchers subjectivity; however, Atkinson and El Haj (1996: 439) offer some critical guidelines to minimise the researchers impact. One of these ways is to be alert for practical matters that concern the interviewees, so that concrete domains may be established. This was done after I had familiarised myself with the data by going through the transcripts many times. The interviews almost consistently threw up the issue of widespread VAW in the city as a development challengea problem that I had not previously encountered in my survey of scholarly and government literature of the development issues in the city of Delhi. By and large, I have retained actual phrases that the interviewees used; thus, these sub-categories rise from the respondents own perspectives and more credibly represent the concerns that are most important to the informants (Atkinson and El Haj 1996). As Spradley (1979) predicted, a few respondents had the gift of expressiveness, insightfulness, and a personal interest and often, greater knowledge about the themes explored. They quickly became key respondents; however the amount of importance that was placed on their views was problematic. Atkinson and El Haj (1996) suggest that if the views of the key respondent are not endorsed sufficiently by the other informants, then the attention given to his/ her views be restrained in the final analysis. It may also be considered that all of my respondents be positioned as key respondents, since the sample size is very small, and their views were specifically sought to inform an otherwise text-based study. I have, nevertheless been careful to highlight different views to each other and to my own, if and when they arose.

Chai and Conversations

The interviews with the 20 women reflected McGranahan and Satterthwaites observation (2000) that in developing cities, concerns about sustainable development tend to be as much about the brown agenda or the human face of development, as the green agenda, or the ecological dimensions. Many of the women instinctively interpreted sustainable development in a social framework (the focus of this article) though it was clear from the conversations that the womens understanding encompassed concern for the society, the environment and the economy. Intergenerational and intra-generational equity is seen as one of the central themes of sustainable development. Concern that future generations as well as the Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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weakest of the present generations should not inherit degraded environments, or bear the cross of helplessness and subordination particularly in the case of womenis evident in my interviewees responses. Respondent 1, the founding director of a prominent south Delhi NGO on educating street children defined sustainable development thus:
You can call development sustainable when the element of dependence is removed and it doesnt come back again several generations hence. Dependence causes exploitation, violence, poverty. We especially need our women to be independent. We need to see a cultural shift. It is not enough to make well-meaning but ultimately weak laws for the poor, women, minorities. These laws dont work because our culture has not changed to support them. Deep down, we accept poverty as normal, we think of women as weak. We take away their fundamental rights and give it back to them as favours. For Delhi per se, I would say that the self-sustaining capacity to manage three thingsDelhis greenery, womens safety and the trafficwould mean sustainability for the city.

Similarly, Respondent 8, the founding president and member of a social movement to preserve Delhis green ridge, also places equity as central to sustainable development: she considers it integral to human dignity, which in turn is vital to sustainable and equitable lifestyles. She further elaborates that sustainable urban development should, in her view, allow the thriving of such human dignity. Her views are reminiscent of postmodernist urban planners like Leonie Sandercock (1998) whose definitive work calls for a sustainable city that celebrates the human spirit. Respondent 8 says:
Sustainable development is about human dignity. Right now, the powerful have choices, the others have to adjust their lifestyles according the choices that they make. There is constant mistrust and power-mongering because of this. Sustainability also has to be dynamic, and sustain and cope with the change that is constantly going on. I would call a society or a certain group of people sustainable if they are able to take advantage of their opportunities. For me, this freedom is sustainable development or sustainability, how to live a fully self-expressed life that also expresses care for others. A sustainable city would be one that allows exactly this. In our culture, cities were centres of learning and wisdom. A city that brings out the best side of human nature is a sustainable city. For me, this is not a romantic notion, I think this is the only way.

Respondent 5, who runs an NGO on HIV/AIDS awareness, argues that sustainable development can enable women to be free of their gender. She says:
Men dont have the burden of constantly being identified as men. They are free of their gender. Women on the other hand are stereotyped. They must behave in a particular way. They must do this and they must not do this. They [sic] are consequences. Being a woman is living a life of many conditions.

This worldview seemed to be present in the consciousness of all the interviewees, largely because of the red alert advertisements declaring Delhi: Unsafe Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 15 for Women that the national daily The Times of India had taken to printing on its front page on a daily basis at this time and that many women referred to. The sense that sustainability means the responsibility to eliminate unethical, immoral or illegal behaviour that can vitally harm society is very strong. However, to my amazement, all of the women without exception explicitly insisted that one of the most distressing aspects of social unsustainability in Delhi is the shocking rate of crime and violence against all sections of women in the city. This is particularly striking when one considers that these women represent a diverse range of development work, and yet, uniformly raised VAW as an important issue while talking about sustainable urban development in Delhi. Respondent 1 was emphatic about the problem as she said:
The traffic is horriblewe can easily spend 2 hours a day sitting in cars. But thats not the only ugly thing about cars these days, is it? What about all the rape that is happening inside the cars? How shocking, for one to drive around the city, and eight others to gang rape [sic] a young college girl in the back seat. In a country where we are taught to think of women as either our sisters or mothers. This maniacal urge to dominate and have powerwe must investigate that. They obviously feel powerless somewhere, and they take it out on the women, over whom they can have physical power at least. India has the worst rate of violence against women, even pregnant women. At the same time, we are capable of some of the finest qualities you will see. Indians are very protective and nurturing of each other.

Narratives about rape in the moving car abounded in the interviews. The car is a subject of much discussion among urban planners and transport experts in the city in relation to concerns about peak oil; the moving car is also the zone of undefined and unpatrolled public-private space, which offers rapists the perfect anonymous space for rape and molestation. Respondent 1s comment on domination and powerlessness points to a plausible explanation for the culture of rape in the city. As shown previously, statistics reveal that most of the rapists are uneducated, illiterate and unemployed, pointing to a lack of meaning in life, and above all, power. Issues of poverty and social inequality are closely tied in with issues of social and economic unsustainability. Almost all the women have an eerie tale of violence to relate, even though they may not be the victims in all these stories; in many narratives, they were the victims in spite of coming from educated and middle class backgrounds, with reasonable access to greater protection. Respondent 5 had incidentally been punched hard in the breast on the morning of the interview while standing at a bus stand, and spoke of the anger and humiliation that she was still experiencing as we spoke. Her assaulter melted away into the crowd within seconds, leaving no opportunity to seek justice. She spoke about the need for women to be on red alert constantly in public spaces in Delhi such as crowded bus stands, packed narrow pedestrian pathways, and at crossings near traffic lights where undisciplined traffic flows increase their vulnerability, underscoring the hostility and aggression that women perceive from the city they call home. Other respondents expressed concern for Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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other women, including colleagues and employees, who had a daily tale of terror to report during the urban transit from home to work. Respondent 3, who heads a rehabilitation shelter for slum children and single mothers from slums, says:
Most of my staff are women as you can see, and they are young or not so well-off, which means they all have a horror story to tell of the buses every single day, somebody groping, somebody molesting. I have somebody in tears or furious everydayhow can these women be expected to work to their maximum potential when they come in already eroded? And they know that on their way back home, they have another battle to face. These women are urban warriors. But the psychology of a soldier is a damaged one. The city is damaging its own productive citizens.

Respondent 3s clients, ironically, are largely victims of frequently brutal physical and psychological abuse. Her likening of her female employees to urban warriors is unconsciously poeticthe various teachers, nurses, midwives and ayahs (child carers) that she employs have a mission to rescue and safeguard, even as they place themselves in vulnerable positions to do so. Her comments echo those of Respondent 8 who refers to her highly educated female social workers with masters degrees and Ph.D.s who she desperately needs, but fears: But how many women are willing, or would their families be willing, to send their girls into the city like this and do some work for the good of the city and the country, when the city seems to eat them alive? Respondent 12, who is a research officer with UNDP, New Delhi described the VAW in the public places as the axis from where you can begin to understand the dysfunctionalities of the city. She elaborates from two perspectivesthe built environment of the city that allows rape, molestation and abduction of women and children with impunity and the appalling criminal allegations against the Delhi police:
With such a worrying crime rate against women in public in Delhi, there is still no system to address this. There are specific sites we can identify as zones of vulnerability for womenin and around Delhis [sic] Universitys womens college campuses, schools which is where crime is so high. Then for women in two-wheelers and even carsno safety at all as male drivers leer, tailgate them, threaten them, follow them. We must [tonal emphasis] find ways of policing civilian cars until this problem is solved. Pedestrian paths are another danger zone [sic]. No respect for pedestrians and they are so crowded. Ideal conditions for molestation and harassment. We actually have to rebuild wide roads and open access footpaths. And we need a good, strong, morally upright police system to monitor all this. This is where I begin to despair. We have such rot in our justice and police system.

These comments show clearly the sobering reality of trying to address VAW in a male gendered zone without an enabling law enforcement system. The citys map clearly highlights zones such as the large Delhi University campuses, footpaths, zebra crossings and bus stands to be particularly dangerous. While Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 17 womens vigilance is high throughout the day, the women noted that nightfall makes it almost impossible to negotiate safety. Respondent 3 stressed:
10 pmthat is absolutely the uppermost limit when you can be out walking, even with a male companion. After that, you are on a death wish. After it gets dark, except on the green government areas of New Delhi, you will find street lamps with fused bulbs, no lighting at all in smaller streets, even in well-off areas like Vasant Kunj and where there is a large university. You cant walk on the streets because it is narrow, dark and full of potholes. All these physical features add to the big problem.

Urban gender equity centrally needs an effective system for implementation of the law. UN Global Impact Assessment (2007) named corruption to be one of the biggest challenges to sustainable development and noted the criminalisation of both the police force and the justice systems in India. The Global Corruption Report 2007 unambiguously pronounced Indias judicial system to be overbearing and democratically unaccountable; it highlighted in strong terms the lack of the publics trust in their judicial system (Bidwai 2007). Respondent 12s suggestion was to enable women to reclaim the space occupied by the dispensers of justice and orderliness: Make more women police officers and judges and give them these crime and violence cases especially. They need a genuine space to work without threat or intimidation. However, with heroic exceptions, these systems remain decidedly male-dominated. Respondent 3 made a vital point that citizens of a sustainable, thriving metropolis need to have a sense of ownership of the city in order to make for a liveable city. Women typically form that section of the population with possibly the greatest investment in building the features that create a liveable city for themselves and their familiessafe and unpolluted public and private spaces, good schools, hospitals, green gardens and parks, and a sense of community spirit and neighbourlinessa spirit that Indian women have always relied on as a valuable resource of care and community safety. This investment is for the greater good of all sections of the society. For instance, many of the respondents spoke at length at the growing incidents of violence against the aged and elderly in Delhi. In India, the aged are traditionally cared for at home within the safe confines of a joint family system. However, with the breakdown of the family into smaller units, mainly through migration of younger generations to other cities and countries for education and employment, the elderly in Indian cities are suddenly in the vulnerable situation of having no carers or protectors. Respondent 4, a retired general medical practitioner, who is now attached full-time to an NGO that rotates her work around four large slums in Delhi, referred to a recent news report that described the violent attack on an 85-year-old grandmother who was raped by a 33-year-old cab driver and his friend in the taxi, and beaten to near death and dumped outside a public train station afterwards, in the evening in the dark. She said: Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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There is something just sick about a society where even the old people are beaten to death and murdered for money. I feel very furious because my mother is almost 80years-old [sic] but very agile and active in her mind. She is curious and I can see that it is frustrating for her to be restrained all the time, even from simple things like going for a walk in the park alone. I can never allow her to go alone and I am not always able to go with her. The elderly have so much wisdom to offer, always in Indian culture, the grandparents are at the forefront of the family.

Respondent 4s remark suggests that the heart of Indian society is at risk, if the elderly and the grandparents, who should be at the forefront of the Indian family, are placed in a vulnerable and unprotected place. Losing the elderly, both physically and emotionally to the threat of violence, implies losing a range of resources that has traditionally knitted Indian society together, such as continuity, traditional wisdom, care, stories and above all, religion and spirituality. She makes a poignant point as she says:
Our spirituality and religion that we Indians are known for, how will it happen when our elderly are terrorised? If our old people are content and safe emotionally and physically, then spirituality will automatically thrive. Religion and a sense of profound spirituality are handed down through the generations; we cannot wake up one day and take it off a bookshelf. Our strongest identity is the one that has sustained us through generation after generation, and which we will pass on as well. But what will we get if our elderly live in fear? And what will we pass on?

These question capture the very essence of sustainable developmentthe gift of receiving something intrinsically valuable and worth sustaining from generations past and passing it on to generations to come. They also imply the fear of fragmentation and atomisation of society, whereby intra-generational interdependency that must form the glue of a healthy, safe society is no longer available. This comment suggests two things: that religion and spirituality are part of a sustainable Indian life, as it were, and that the elderly are important dispensers and guides to such wisdom and resources. It underscores the conclusions of a growing number of studies on sustainable development: the need to be attentive to the spiritual dimensions of development, along with the closely interlinked social, economic and environmental aspects. The continued VAW in the city is a challenge to sustainability on all these fronts.

Conclusions
The scholarly research and primary data in this paper provide an opening into a critical discussion on VAW as an urban sustainability impediment. The women respondents, who are all encultrated in the discourse of sustainable development, and who are variously scholars, activists or leading practitioners of development Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Violence Against Women in Delhi 19 in Delhi, independently and emphatically described VAW in the citys public spaces as a major problem of Delhis sustainable development. The interviews show the women to be conversant with the dominant discourse of sustainable development, and yet, they offer highly localised critical readings into the discourse in their city. It is this informed framing of sustainability issues that enables appropriate policy to be articulated and implemented, and facilitates a bottom-up approach to sustainability. Such framing also avoids the familiar trap of VAW being treated as a womens problem and makes an explicit plea for an inclusive community and state involvement to address this issue as a threat to women and the larger society. An unsafe Delhi for women compromises Delhis development as a whole. Furthermore, the paper draws attention to Delhis reputation as Indias rape capital. VAW in other Indian cities is prevalent as well; however, Delhi leads the way. Framing and dealing with the issue as a sustainability problem in Delhi will have resonance for other cities. The development agenda and master plans of Delhi, Indias Supermetro, becomes a prototype for planning and urban development all over the country (Jain 1990: 62). Delhis sustainable development can offer itself as a model for other Indian towns and cities, planned around addressing VAW as a serious urban sustainability concern, and designing cities safe for women. It can be eminently argued that all forms of VAW are sustainability concerns; however, this article was specifically concerned with the gendered violence that occurs in the citys public spaces. Specifically, womens unequal status to men in society is reflected in the lack of gender-sensitive planning of the citys spaces. The data generated reinforces VAW as a sustainability problem in the following ways: in terms of compromising equity and personal liberty, in the unmonitored physical development of Delhi that abets gendered crime and the corruption of the citys vanguards of developmentthe police and the judiciary. This conclusion may also be reasonably extended to the other cities in India (and elsewhere), thus arguing that this issue is also a priority of national (and international) development. Reconceptualising VAW as a sustainability crisis for the city may have the carrying power for urban planning and policy implementation that previous rhetoric lacked. The Delhi state government recognises sustainable development as a priority in its Master Plan 2021. By implication, VAW would become a priority issue to resolve. As the UN-HABITAT findings (2007) confirm, cities that are designed from the standpoint of womens safety, unrestricted mobility and participation are fundamentally sustainable cities. The critical role of women in sustaining the natural ecology has long been noted (Shiva 1988). Giving women complete autonomy and ensuring their safe participation in the planning of the city, as well as placing them in positions of authority in the judiciary and police force are then vital to enable ecologically, socially and economically sustainable built and natural environments in the city. Journal of South Asian Development, 7, 1 (2012): 122

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Yamini Narayanan

1. This article will not analyse the different sorts of gender-based violence in Delhi. Rather, the article is particularly concerned with VAW in Delhis public spaces and argues that it is an important urban sustainability concern. In doing so, it may focus particularly on rape, beatings and murder of women by men because Delhi has high rates of these sorts of violence. 2. Refers to the practice of the brides family paying an enormous price for the groom, typically in the form of cash and expensive gifts such as electronic gadgets, cars and even real estate. Dowry is now an offence punishable by law; however, the practice is prevalent. 3. This misguided opinion caused Virender Kumar, the vice-principal of Kirori Mal College of Delhi University to make an explicit rule that all female students, especially those from the north-eastern states, must dress only in the traditional salwar-kameez when in attendance (Puri 2006).

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