Originally Posted by
mandolino
Regarding India, nothing has changed except the amount of national and international publicity given to violent sex crimes. There has always been an undercurrent of sexism, violence and corruption there and it has not got suddenly worse just because the western media has started to highlight it. There was something of an over-romantic view of India before, but if you would visit there before the shocking sex crimes hit the headlines, there's no need to change now.
If anything has changed, it's for the better, now that there has been such national shame over these horrible crimes. However nothing changes quickly in India.
I don't buy that last paragraph's first sentence.
Sexual assault of women -- domestic and/or foreign -- by non-relatives has almost certainly skyrocketed in India since media rules were relaxed in India; and such sexual assault risks for women have gotten worse in India as: rural-urban and other domestic migration has increased; traditional extended family and other hierarchical community structures got displaced; state TV lost most of its marketshare to private channel and cable/satellite operators; Indian and foreign movies playing in India got more "sexual"; and mobile phone and computer internet porn use has increased. Economic and social liberalization has positive aspects, but some of that comes with negative aspects too.
Educated women in Indian workplaces, for example, are far more likely to face risk of being sexually assaulted on the way to/from work or of being sexually harassed at work now than even ten or twenty years ago. The culture has changed tremendously since the 1990s, but not all for the better in terms of safety. The crime problem in India has changed with changing cultural/demographic patterns and done so very quickly; however, disappearing the negative aspects of those changes won't happen anytime soon.