All content ©️ Raj Sekhar Aich

Although human history has shown that male urges and capacity to do evil, particularly towards females, have been prevalent through most cultures in most times, we understand that this is part of the strategy of subjugation of women and limiting their access to resources and proper utilization of their political rights. This is, indeed, a much larger geopolitical and sociological issue. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines sexual violence as “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting.”  India and West Bengal has seen its fair share of sexual violence. An average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in India in 2022, according to data from India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The true figure is likely to be much higher, as many such crimes go unreported due to fear of reprisal, prevailing stigmas around victims and a lack of faith in police investigations. Although new legislation has been put forward, the recent incident on 9th August, 2024 at RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata reminded us how inadequate we are as a society to provide women with proper safety and a healthy environment to prosper in. Consequently, there need to be holistic steps from different sectors and dimensions of the society to prevent such sexual atrocities on women. Taking this premise:

Gouri is an initiative by prof. Dr. Raj Sekhar Aich, with the aim being curbing sexual violence against women at the state level from the root. There will be 5 elements to the proposed NGO

1. Sensitization of men – The first aspect that needs to be addressed to curb sexual violence is altering men’s violent perspectives and actions towards women. For that, education and training has to be both at childhood and adulthood.

   1. School level education – using proper discussion methodology, school trainers associated with Gouri will attempt to create open sessions where clear communication and frank discussions are held with children of all genders, delving into why sexual violence occurs, what should be the healthy attitude towards these incidents, how as a society we reflect on them, and how as an individual we should not only stay away from them, but also help prevent them.

   2. Adults training – Although it is vital to create change for future generations, it is equally vital to work with adult males so that immediate actions can be taken with regards to their behaviour with others and sexual violence.

2. Self-defense training for women – Although, ideally, men should not be sexually violent towards women in the first place, the reality may be quite far away from this utopian view. At the same time, as much as we have to attempt to change men’s perspectives and actions, we cannot wait for the utopia to be created immediately. Hence, there needs to be training of women, providing them with the essential psychological and physical tools to defend themselves against physical attacks of sexual nature. Consequently, Gouri would introduce to the mass population its unique style of self defense strategies, fine-tuned by Prof. Aich’s decades of training. Training seminars and sessions will be voluntarily held across the state, irrespective of socioeconomic or age, physical ability, or experience of the participants.

3. Support network for women – Gouri would attempt at creating a healthy social network support system for women where they can share their experiences of sexual violence, vent out their frustrations, and collectively come up with the right tools to cope with such atrocities. A long-term aim would be to create an app where real-time updates can be provided and access to various resources and public support can be gained.

4. Research – A fundamental part of Gouri would be theoretical and practical research on sexual violence against women in and around West Bengal. Articles, academic essays, media essays, would be written and shared to access and inform public opinion. Furthermore, the real-time data collected will be significant to shape legislation.

5. Legislation – The final part of the puzzle is legislation in light of public opinion and literature review of global action against sexual violence.