The case of brutal rape and murder of a girl in RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata has initiated sensible and long-overdue deliberation over women’s security in India, where the key concern has shifted to the increasing incidence of sexual violence in India.
During the Suo-moto hearing on the Kolkata rape case on Tuesday, the Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, also observed that “the nation can’t await another rape for real changes on the ground.”.
But the devil question still lingers as to how things have changed on the ground since an Empowered Committee was constituted only in 2015 to formalize and regulate the funding under the Nirbhaya fund.
The Nirbhaya Fund was established in the year 2013 in the aftermath of the Delhi Gang rape in December 2012 with the purpose of enhancing the security of women in the country.
Accordingly, the Ministry of Women and Child Development constituted an Empowered Committee on October 26, 2015, to clear the proposals that may be funded under the Nirbhaya Fund.
Again, what has been achieved since 2015 is even a decline of 9 percent. 1 percent, in terms of rape cases in India, with the number more or less unchanged between 2019 and 2022, excluding the year 2020, in which the number of reported rape cases plummeted.
According to the answer of the Government of India to the Lok Sabha given on August 2, 2024, Rs 7212 has been envisaged as total allocation. 80 crore have been provided to the Nirbhaya fund, out of which Rs 5,512.97 crore, or nearly 76 percent, has been utilized by different states and ministries in their kitty.
