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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, March 19: Outraged women’s groups have forced the General Insurance Corporation (GIC) to reconsider its insurance scheme for rape victims, within hours of its inauguration with great fanfare by the Prime Minister.
The Rajrajeshwari Mahila Kalyan Bima Yojana, drummed up by the GIC as a “unique” scheme, was launched by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today as his government’s gift to the women of India on the BJP government’s completion of one year in office.
But a couple of hours after Vajpayee flagged off the scheme, activists of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) accosted the GIC’s top brass, forcing them to backtrack. GIC chairman D Sengupta has assured AIDWA activists that the Corporation will “reconsider” implementation of the policy to provide insurance cover for rape victims.
Women’s groups have been seething ever since GIC announced its scheme under which women in the age group 10 to 75 years can insure themselves against any disability caused by rape, all fora premium of Rs 15 per annum.
The insensitivity of the scheme was evident from the fact that the policy categorises the incident of rape and the disabilities that may arise from the sexual attack under different heads, with the insurance corporation as the arbiter to decide how much compensation should be paid to the victim.
Making it worse was evident from the compensation to be doled out to the victims: Rs 12,500 for the loss of an eye or a limb, and Rs 25,000 if the disability is of a permanent nature.
“This government has been promising to enact capital punishment for rapists. It has now done a complete about turn by asking women to pay in anticipation of being raped,” said Shabnam Hashmi, a women’s rights activist.
Dismissing the proposal as the “marketing of rape,” Brinda Karat of AIDWA said the underlying philosophy of the GIC’s scheme seems to be that “just as death is inevitable, so is rape. So take out insurance for that day”.
The explanation given by GIC is that the scheme is partof a general policy for disabilities, and that the intention was to compensate rape victims for any disability they may suffer. But, this again, equates the rape with the disability, implying compensation for the loss of a limb but ignoring the lifelong trauma of the rape victim. “What the policy seeks to do is reduce the heinous crime of rape to a mere accident,” said Hashmi.
Fears were also expressed that the new scheme would provide yet another avenue for manipulating rape on the girl child and lead to an increase in child abuse for monetary gains. When women have been demanding more sensitive handling of rape victims, the insurance scheme would add additional trauma.
