National Annual Report & Index on Women’s Safety 2025

Context

The National Commission for Women (NCW) publishes the National Annual Report & Index on Women’s Safety (NARI) 2025, which ranks Indian cities according to how safe women are in each.

Key Highlights

• The safest cities include Mumbai, Itanagar, Gangtok, Aizawl, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, and Kohima.
• The least secure cities are Patna, Jaipur, Faridabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Srinagar, and Ranchi.
• The national safety score, which served as the standard for measuring city performance, was 65%.
• In 2024, 7% of women reported being harassed in public settings, but the rate increased to 14% among younger women. of 24, showing a higher degree of vulnerability among younger age groups.
• According to reports, the majority of harassment against women occurs in public transit (29%) and neighborhoods (38%).
• Just 25% of women were sure that authorities would take appropriate action on reports of harassment and safety concerns.

Obstacles to Gender-Safe Cities

• Institutional and governance shortcomings: Numerous organizations operating in silos, resulting in ineffective enforcement of safeguards for women’s security.
• Slow judicial response: Repeated offenses are made possible by the dilution of deterrents caused by delayed investigations and lengthy trials.
• Transportation flaws include congested buses, unreliable last-mile connectivity, and a shortage of women working in the industry, all of which contribute to greater insecurity.
• Underreporting: Incidents are reported by just one in three women, indicating both social stigma and a lack of trust in the police.
• The persistence of patriarchal standards: Social perceptions often trivialize harassment and place blame on women, which discourages them from reporting it.
• Over-reliance on data: Official statistics do not account for insecurities based on perception, which are still ignored in policy frameworks.

Programs of the Government to Promote Women’s Safety

• Nirbhaya Fund: The Ministry of Women and Child Development has created the fund to fund nationwide safety initiatives.
• The Ministry of Women and Child Development launched the Sexual Harassment Electronic Box (SHe-Box) Portal as a means of offering a single-window platform for for women to report sexual harassment in the workplace.
  • • All women can access it, no matter what industry they work in—organized or unorganized, public or private.
• The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013, applies to all women, regardless of their age, occupation, or industry.
• The appropriate government establishes Local Committees (LCs) for workplaces with more than 10 workers, and employers are required to form an Internal Committee (IC) there. smaller businesses or cases against employers.

Way Ahead

• Temporary Action:

  • • For a coordinated response, integrate 24×7 women helplines with municipal, ambulance, and local police services.
    • Perform quick compliance checks of POSH agreements at major employers and make the anonymized compliance results public.

• Mid-term measure:

  • • Connect city grants to quantifiable safety metrics and require gender audits as part of central urban programs.
    • Improve public transportation with mandatory CCTV, grievance redressal timelines, and operator accountability.

• Long-Term Action:

  • • Initiate multi-year gender-awareness campaigns in schools, colleges, and workplaces with quantifiable behavioral results.
    • Integrate gender-sensitivity into police training and assessment, and encourage men’s programs that question patriarchal ideals.
    • Invest in community-led safety programs that foster trust between citizens and institutions.

Source: The Hindu

Mains PYQ

(Q) Is the National Commission for Women able to strategize and tackle the problems that women face at both public and private spheres? Give reasons in support of your answer. (2017)

Download as PDF