“They said to me, why are you bothering, Madam? We have photographs of all the girls. And out came two albums with photographs of each and every girl who was there at ‘Jamuna Mansion’, her height, weight… and every detail.”

Thus, right under their nose, and with complete police knowledge, exploitation of minors as commercial sex workers was taking place in south Bombay, practically unknown to everybody.

Next morning, The Times of India carried the news on its front page. It caught the eye of the Governor. It was a Sunday morning but he called a meeting of the DG, the Police Commissioner and the Home Minister (Mr. Chagan Bhujbal was the incumbent at that time). Dr. Advani was also called. The incensed Governor asked, “How have you licensed this?”

When she was asked her opinion, Dr. Advani said it would be better if all the men who had been caught in the building were made to spend one night in the police station so that parents learnt about their sons and wives about their husbands

Far from South Bombay, the speaker recalled, she had just reached Lucknow station and received the news – not reported by the newspapers – that a three-month-old baby had been raped in Lakhimpur-Kheri district.

Her team rushed to the village. The baby was in a pathetic state despite three operations. But no FIR had been filed because the man who had committed the crime was politically influential.

With the help of Mrs. Sushma Swaraj, the then Union Health Minister, Dr. Advani managed to get the PMO involved. The then Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, took interest in the case and the follow-up. The baby was treated and taken care of for about four months.

“But the issue is that many of these crimes go unreported. We know of only the few that are covered in the papers and the electronic media. Thanks to the investigative journalism of the electronic media, there is huge pressure on the law-enforcement agencies to do something.

“However, the electronic media cannot substitute a law-enforcing agency. And once it stops being hot news, no one is bothered, unless it is the Nithari killings or a few other cases.”

Dr. Advani said another big problem concerned HIV and AIDS. Although very few HIV cases resulted in AIDS, knowledge of this fact was lacking and often led to tragic consequences. India had a National Aids Control Organisation (NACOR) and similar set-ups in the States (SACORs); but this institutional mechanism, instead of serving its purpose, sometimes went against the very interests of women.

On a visit to Andhra Pradesh, she was told that a girl had been burnt alive in Kuppam; she had been diagnosed with HIV and a SACOR representative had made a home visit.

But this visit was interpreted by the villagers to mean that the woman was “dangerous” and that she had to be avoided. She was given no food, nothing to eat, had nowhere to go and her brother and his wife put her outside the hut.

When she started feeling cold, they wrapped her in a gunny bag. Soon, she started smelling and the whole village started stinking. The upshot of all this was that the municipality was told to take her away. She was burnt alive.

This happened in the constituency of Mr. Chandrababu Naidu when he was the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. But there was no report in the media because it concerned the CM’s district.

Such crimes against women were occurring throughout the length and breadth of the country. For example, there were bonded labourers in some rice fields in Tamil Nadu where the women were branded for four to five generations.

Some generations earlier, some one had taken a loan of Rs. 50 and been unable to repay it. The amount kept on multiplying and had grown to lakhs; the loan was “passed down” to four generations. No one was ever going to repay it. The women continued working (even two or three days after delivery) as bonded labourers and the owners of the rice mills kept a little diary listing the amount due and the names of the victims.

“Such things are happening every day in our country… what statistics can you and I ask for or look into?”

Dr. Advani then turned to what she called the “brighter” side.

Pointing out that women had grit and could change things on their own, she recalled visiting a woman who earned a living by dancing, in a dark, damp, god-forsaken village in Bihar.

A young girl emerged from an inner room to say, “Good evening, Ma’am”. She was shocked at this greeting. The girl told her that she was doing her B.A. (Hons.); her mother didn’t want her to wear dancing bells, so she earned and paid for her education. The girl was a student of Delhi University.

“So it’s not the law-enforcing agencies who will make a difference, it’s the mothers of this country who will make a difference. It’s the mothers of this country who will make a difference in every stream. There is no end to the examples that I can quote.”

When she visited a remote area near the Sariska wildlife sanctuary in Rajasthan, the women told her that they did not want a police station to be established in their village. They said if ever there was a problem, they would sit under a tree and would resolve it before the sun set.

“They said they had the capacity to resolve problems. Unfortunately, in cities we don’t have the capacity. We don’t have the courage to say that we don’t need a police station.”

Dr. Advani recalled that as an LL.M. student of Bombay University she and a friend went to Azad Maidan Police Station to see how it functioned. They told the police that they wanted to file an FIR on behalf of a friend who had been beaten for dowry.

The first question that was shot at them was, “Is she alive or dead?” The girls said that had she been dead they would have been at Chandanwadi crematorium and not trying to file an FIR.

But the police told them in a very matter-of-fact manner: “No, Madam, come to us if she dies… we have this book titled ‘Indian Penal Code’ and it’s written that if she dies then you can come here.”

It was this lack of sensitisation that had to be addressed by the country’s Planning Commission. It had to adopt a gender-sensitive budget, whether for the judiciary, the police or the administration. A lot of money was being spent but it was not flowing in the right direction and its beneficiaries were ignorant about what was due to them.

On another occasion, Dr. Advani said, she was at the government hospital in Agra when a woman on the verge of delivery reached there. The child was about to be born but there was no doctor. She was told to travel another 100 km. to reach a hospital to deliver. There were two journalists from Dainik Bhaskar who said they would not let her go and would see that she delivered at that hospital.

It was learnt later that the doctors appointed to that government hospital were illegally conducting private practice, leaving the job of performing deliveries to dais and ayahs who could not handle complicated cases.

Dr. Advani and the others followed the case and got the doctor suspended in order to send out a stern message to those not performing their duties. But for how long could such a message carry substance? Six to eight months? And what if the person concerned had political clout? He or she would not even be suspended in the first place.

Having described some of her experiences, the speaker then explained the setting up of the Ministry for Woman and Child and how she was able to turn the “toothless” National Commission for Women into one that made the administration work with the help of the then President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Finally, Dr. Advani narrated two incidents of sati, one each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The first was an example of the callousness of the district administration, while the second showed what a woman who was aware of the law could achieve.

‘Parliament should devote 33% of its time to debate social issues’