On April 29, a teenage girl and her mother were thrown off a moving public transport bus just outside Moga in Punjab. >The girl died , while the mother is still in hospital. Shinder Kaur, 36, had boarded the Orbit bus at Moga with her daughter, aged 13, and son, aged 14. When Ms. Kaur objected to being overcharged, the conductor and helper began to abuse her and make lewd comments. When she appealed to the driver for help, he started speeding up instead. As the family began to protest loudly, the girl was pushed to the door and thrown off, followed by her mother. Her brother was forced off shortly afterwards. The incident is inhuman in itself, but several facts have added to the outrage. First, the bus company is owned by members of the family of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, whose son, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, first denied the family’s stake, and then refused to take responsibility for the incident. Second, at least two politicians from the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal made the worst kind of insensitive remarks on the tragedy. Punjab Education Minister Surjit Singh Rakhra said the death of the girl was “god’s will”, while Moga MLA Joginderpal Jain insisted it was an “accident” that could happen “on any bus”. If there was some hope that all the uproar and protest countrywide following the Nirbhaya rape case would usher in a slightly different kind of discourse on the abuse of women, that hope has been belied by a series of incidents and reactions.
Three aspects here are particularly troubling. First, why is it that not one of the other 15 passengers on the bus came forward to help the woman and her children? Have people in India become so inured to the abuse of women that they take it for granted and just watch? Second, was the bus crew emboldened to break the law so blatantly because powerful people owned the transport company? Political patronage often shields the worst criminals in India. And finally, if our lawmakers have a mindset that lets them term an obvious case of molestation and manslaughter as “god’s will” or an “accident”, then where does one even begin to protect women’s rights in India? >Mr. Sukhbir Badal has since said it is “absurd” to think an incident involving such brutality would go “unpunished because of the company’s ownership”. One hopes this will turn out to be true. Political parties are trying to get mileage from the incident. Meanwhile, on multiple fronts, open violence against women continues. It will continue until attitudes change at the grassroots level, aided by teachers, parents and others, and by TV, cinema and pop culture — which ought to push narratives of power for women.
