India is an awful place for women. This claim is made almost every day in media all over the world. In fact, Trust Law, a feminist charity run by Thomson Reuters foundation claimed that India is 4th most dangerous place for women in the world.
After the feminist video of a woman walking around the streets of New York went viral, a similar experiment was conducted in the city of Mumbai, which has a population of 12 million people.
IBNLIVE, the partner channel of CNN in India reports,
A woman wearing a top and a skirt walks around Mumbai city for 10 hours from Dadar East to Andheri, and Bandra to Kurla but doesn’t get catcalled even once! Though the model in the video gets stared at, but no man passed lewd comments or approaches her in the video.
This video was watched by 2.5 million viewers in YouTube in 3 months. The group that conducted this experiment writes,
We at IndieTube in Mumbai decided to mimic the 10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman video. Our model wears a top and a short skirt and walks around Mumbai city throughout the day almost 10 hours of walking. To our surprise she did not get a single instance of street harassment.
I have never seen any street harassment of women in Bangalore, which has a population of almost 10 million now. A camera in a busy street for a couple of hours in a day and a night can easily capture people’s behaviour.
Why India is stereotyped so badly in international media is something much more complex, which I will cover in another article. But, for the time being, I hope the concerned people of the West get some sound sleep with the belief that at least one city in India is safe for women. They can continue to believe that most men in India are evil. I can not stop them from having such a compassionate, loving and broad outlook towards people of other countries.
