[Damini Gang-Rape] Mizoram and Not Delhi the Most Unsafe City for Women?

by MTN on JANUARY 8, 2013

Recent Gang-rape of "Damini" in the Delhi has impacted the image of India quite badly across the world. This has again only proved that how unsafe is Delhi for women. Well, its not only about Delhi but even other states have quite shockingrape rates that has made India a World's rape capital. The data on rape rate statistics for the year 2011 has been compiled by National Crime Records Bureau which has been plotted on two different maps by IBNLive as well as Wall Street Journal's India edition. The data is based on reported rape cases across different states of India.

Interactive Rape Map of India

The interactive rape map of India by IBN (map link) has different colours marked for different number of rape cases reported for the year 2011. For example, Madhya Pradesh has come up as a state where the highest number of rape cases (total 3406) has been reported during 2011. For Delhi, however, the total number of reported rape cases is 572. The north-east states like Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh etc. are the ones with least number of rape cases. However, these are absolute figures and does not take into account the total population and sex ratio of the area/state.

Mizoram and Not Delhi the Most UnSafe City for Women (Rape Rate Statistics)

The Indian edition of WSJ has come up with another map which shows the rape rate across different states of India. Quite naturally, it shows the north-eastern states as having highest rape rate. The rape rate has been calculated based on reported rape cases per 100,000 women. So, the average rape rate for north-east area of India is 10.1 with Mizoram leading the list. Mizoram has rape rate of 14.3 per 100,000 women for the year 2011. It will be interesting to note, however, that the total population of Mizoram as per census 2011 was 1,091,014 out of which the total number of women was 538,675.

Delhi leads the Northern part of the country with rape rate of 7.4 with average of the whole of North India being 3.6. Since, the data is based on reported filed rape cases, for Delhi, the lesser rate could also mean that not all the cases would have been reported or filed officially. Still, quite interestingly, it is just half of the rape rate across Mizoram which is a small state in north-east area. If we believe this data, then it is Mizoram and not Delhi the most unsafe city of India for women as has been projected always by media. Delhi being capital of India comes to most limelight quite naturally during media coverage.

You can blame the media also for not giving that much importance to the crime rates of other states/areas of India. Indian New channels who always strive for the TRP generally prefers to cover the major cities more than smaller town which is really bad on media's part.