Not a single day passes by without reports of crimes against women and children in India. NOT A SINGLE DAY! From EVERY SINGLE corner of the country! From every strata of society!

The latest is the news of a six month old baby fighting for her life in a hospital in a small town in India. As always, the perpetrator was known to the family, and was entrusted with caring for the child for just a few hours. As always, the victim's family is being threatened with dire consequences.

Rapes of toddlers in safe places like schools happens with sickening regularity. Some are even committed by minors...who are children themselves, like in the case of this 6 month old baby. The accused was only 17 yrs old, and was defended by his own sister!

Victims are finally daring to speak out and file FIRs, and awareness about such crimes is definitely rising, but action against them is not. In spite of the outrage, the anger, the lip service promises, nothing changes. Instead of doing the right thing, guardians of morality are reveling in finding outrageous causes for rape. Under existing laws, the minimum punshment for the offense is only 7 years!

While stricter laws, and stringent enforcement of the laws are definitely called for, we also need some preventive measures. We need to increase awareness among youth and also children, who inherently trust the adults around them to protect them. While adults need to know, and remember what is ok and not ok to do, children also need to know the difference between good touch and bad touch. They need to know that they can scream NO when a trusted adult hurts them. All this is could easily be inculcated in age-appropriate sex education. Every nursery school, every primary school should teach this. Each and every adult, literate or illiterate should be taught how to recognize possible signs and symptoms that their child has been abused.

So Dear NaMo, I sincerely request that our children be protected, and be made aware of their rights. Instead of making this a taboo subject, make it part of the regular curriculum.

Hoping for a better future for our children,

Kashmira Patel