Brutal death has changed India, but huge challenges remain

India is not the place it was on December 16 last year, when a gang raped a physiotherapy student on a New Delhi minibus, inflicting injuries so grievous that she died in a Singapore hospital two weeks later. The brutality of the crime shocked and enraged as no single violent act against a woman had before, prompting in a matter of months legal changes that rights groups had been advocating for decades. Expectations have also changed markedly in cities and among the educated, but while there has been an upsurge in cases reported, rape remains as prevalent as ever. That Indian men have generally not changed their attitudes and poorer women are still reluctant to speak out should not be surprising; educating on any matter, regardless of the importance, takes time.

A woman is raped in India every 20 minutes, just as on December 16, 2012. Many men, especially those from rural areas, continue to view women as being of a lower status, to be treated as subservient and abused if wishes are not followed. Women who are poorly educated, of a lower caste or in jobs that make them vulnerable are little affected by the shift. They have low expectations, hoping not to be killed for having an insufficient dowry, not to be beaten too badly, that they please their husband by giving birth to a son rather than a daughter.

Attitudes change slowly in such a conservative society. The shift is more noticeable in cities, though. In New Delhi and other large population centres, there is now less reluctance on the part of victims of sexual assault to go to police; in the past year, reporting of rape in the notoriously unsafe capital has increased by 140 per cent and of harassment by 600 per cent. The high-profile cases of the editor-in-chief of India's leading investigative magazine being accused of sexual assault by a colleague and a similar claim by an intern against a retired supreme court judge keep the media spotlight on the issue.

It took the brutal death in New Delhi of an educated woman to stir change. But much work and effort by the government and society is needed before the shift affects all women equally. Deep bureaucratic and patriarchical challenges lie ahead.