Adolescent Girls In Urban Slums : An Enquiry Into Their Safety And Security Concerns

Abstract

In the contemporary world of rapid urbanisation, urban slums emerge as a new social dynamic system with a plethora of law and order challenges. Adolescent girls in urban slums are one of the most vulnerable sections of the society subject to an array of safety and security concerns. Through the literature review it has been found that the western theories of abuse does not hold ground in the Indian context and this research attempted to study the safety and security concerns of adolescent girls in urban slums in a micro context within the Rajendranagar slum of Bangalore and strengthen the base for a theoretical framework within the Indian context. The qualitative nature of the research along with the sensitive nature of data required the method of snowball sampling. Rajendranagar Slum was a Pandora’s Box of human rights violations and the state of the adolescent girls were truly disheartening. One of the important findings of the study was the existence of a tendency among the people in the slum to move to the exteriors of the slum from the interior regions. . The people resorted mostly resorted to the instrument of marriage where the girls from the interiors of the slum would be married off to the men from the exterior regions. There was a silent hierarchy that existed within the layers of slum with the dignity and quality of life decreasing deeper into the interiors of the slum. This research follows the basic assumption that security is the sanctuary from intentional threats while safety is a more relative term and is understood as the control of identified threats to secure a permissible amount of risk (Sehwal 2016). Problematic Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM), Physical and sexual abuse and child marriage were the major threats identified and Sexual abuse of adolescent girls was found to be the most rampant and serious violation that is studied in detail. The study has formulated a Multifactorial theory of Abuse which is based on Maslow’s theory of motivation. The theory helps to explain the peculiarity of abuse in the urban slum context and highlights the need for a specific policy framework to address the issue. The study then compares case studies of a married and unmarried adolescent girl in the slum to prove that child marriage is not a safety valve to prevent child abuse and it is only contortion of the form of abuse. Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) passed in the year 2012 is India’s first comprehensive law to equip children against the crimes of sexual harassment, assault and pornography along with upholding the safety and interests of children at every stage. The POCSO legislation is built upon the foundation of a retroactive system of punishment for offences and banking on the power of deterrence created by fear of the punishment. POCSO has several commendable features but the study is questioning the validity of the framework of protection and further proposing an alternative ex-ante framework of prevention based on the social ecological model of factors leading to sexual abuse which identify four tier’s including individual, inter personal, community and society. The policy recommendations have been made following this particular model of prevention at the four levels focusing on both the victim’s and the offender’s side.