Alcohol does explain it in part, as does the tolerance for public drunkeness which has risen and become more widespread even as alcohol has become more expensive in some ways. As a society dealing with a rapidly changing environment -- from one where on-screen kissing in Indian movies was considered pushing the limits too far to one where mobile phone porn is distracting police on watch guard duty -- it is inevitable that there would be some negative byproducts too. This is one of them.

The most recent lewd comments I heard in India came from men who don't drink for supposedly religious reasons. And the security screeners at SXR harassing ethnic European and East Asian women and making it a point to look at all their digital camera photos? Also the same kind of people who don't drink or get found drunk in public. The gang rape in Bombay a few days ago included alleged perpetrators who also have no record of drinking alcohol, also for supposedly religious reasons.

Internal migration and alcohol doesn't explain it all, but it does explain a lot of it. However, there are a lot of factors that have contributed to the situation, including a sort of impunity for rapists in a culture where reporting rape destroys marriage prospects of women and even little girls and so reporting rapes to the police is most often not even done. For this same reason, rapes by Indian security forces in the N and NE of India are officially undercounted because the government won't consider the reports of even government-employed doctors and nurses as evidence of a rape epidemic that hit those areas, especially the rural areas. In the past 20 years, how many Union and State government legislators in India had criminal charges pressed against them for even rape and yet were able to stay in office? More than I want to count.