The chief minister of West Bengal has acknowledged that violence against women is increasing in the state. No doubt the 23rd state conference of the All India Democratic Women’s Association was gratified by this graceful admission. It might be mentioned in passing to the chief minister that such violence has been on the rise since the Eighties, and has intensified during the Nineties. Nor was anyone sitting quiet. There have been repeated protests, analyses and surveys, exposés and debates in the media, and the focussed efforts of women’s rights groups to get the administration to listen. Perhaps the chief minister was signalling that the administration had at last heard the distant tumult. He even managed to name one form of violence. Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee selected for mention torture for dowry, in which, he said, wives were beaten up and sometimes even driven out of their homes. In keeping either with gentlemanly rhetoric or simple ignorance, he offered an amazingly edited version of reality. Women are killed, regularly, in the cruellest ways for dowry. What Mr Bhattacharjee seems unaware of, however, is that this is the one crime in which stricter laws and their fairly consistent implementation appear to be having some effect, although it is still too early to register real change.

There is a lesson in this, and the lesson is for the administration. A quick response to complaints and strict application of the law are the first steps in tackling violence against women. Rigorous sentences minus loopholes are the only way to deter this crime, and also the only way to show that the state and society take crimes against women seriously. Mr Bhattacharjee assured the gathering that the police have been asked to be alert to women’s complaints. His innocence as police minister is quite enviable. It is rare for women to get the police to hear their complaints about sexual offences, and, sometimes, to get away without having additional jibes thrown at them. Having expended his ire on the husbands who torture wives for dowry, the chief minister had none left over for the rapists and robbers, the sexual molesters and acid-throwers, the physical and verbal abusers who now abound in his state. Like a well-timed taunt, a group of party-workers were robbed and molested while returning from the same meeting. But Mr Bhattacharjee was right in saying that the police are not entirely to blame. It is the criminalization of political parties that now assures sexual criminals easy bail and easy release. Unfortunately, pious sentiments mean nothing in a state where Bapi Sen died less than a year ago.