According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), India has recorded around 30,000 reported rape cases every year between 2020 and 2024. Some of these cases receive widespread media attention, often becoming the centre of public outrage, social media discussions, and demands for justice. But as the story receives less media attention andmedia coverage moves on to newer stories and headlines, these conversations gradually fade, even though the problem itself persists.
Watching this cycle repeat makes me pause and ask a question I believe is worth exploring: Can awareness alone create meaningful change, or does real change require visible and sustained accountability?
Awareness plays an important role in addressing rape. It encourages conversations, reduces stigma, and motivates people to speak out. It can also provide practical information by encouraging conversations around consent, helping people recognise abusive behaviour, support survivors, understand ways to reduce personal risk, and intervene when they witness potentially harmful situations.
The challenge, however, lies in how it is sometimes framed. Awareness programs can sometimes shift toward “prevention strategies,” risking victim blaming instead of addressing the root problem. This can unintentionally make people believe that victims are partly responsible for what happened to them.
That is why, it is equally important to ensure that the perpetrators of sexual violence are consistently held accountable, not only by the judiciary, but also by the workplaces, educational institutions, organizations, and communities around them.
However, ensuring accountability is not always straightforward. Many rape cases go unreported and are never officially registered, making it difficult to capture the full extent of the problem. This is because reporting crime and seeking justice is often more complicated. Many survivors experience shame, guilt, fear, and may hesitate to come forward because they worry about being blamed, disbelieved, or judged. Delayed reporting, limited evidence, memory gaps, and power imbalances can further complicate investigations and legal proceedings.
Additionally, feminist scholars argue that the effects of sexual violence impact even those who do not directly experience it. The perceived threat of rape can lead many women to adopt a state of constant vigilance, influencing how they move through and interact with the world. This can mean choosing a different route home, sharing their live location with friends, avoiding certain places after dark, or constantly staying alert to their surroundings. When the burden of prevention falls primarily on those at risk, rather than on challenging the behaviour that creates the risk, it can reinforce existing inequalities in power between men and women.
This is where accountability becomes important. ]If the threat of rape can shape how people live their everyday lives, then how society responds to that behaviour matters too. Psychological research on social norms suggests that people look at those around them to understand what behaviours are acceptable, what will be challenged, and what is likely to be ignored. These norms are not only shaped by laws or official policies but are also rooted in small, everyday interactions.
In other words, if the constant threat of rape helps maintain structures of power and control, then the nature of our collective response to such violence becomes a crucial factor that either challenges or reinforces those very systems.
There are many instances where sexist jokes are dismissed as "just humour." When a colleague's inappropriate comment is ignored rather than confronted, when media narratives underplay harassment as an inevitable aspect of nightlife or when a public figure accused of assault continues to receive admiration and support despite credible allegations,it indirectly communicates that such behaviour is not serious enough to warrant consequences that could discourage its repetition
Meaningful change depends on systems that respond consistently and fairly. Such as workplaces investigating complaints transparently, society refusing to excuse or minimise abusive behaviour, people shifting attention away from blaming victims and toward holding perpetrators accountable, and legal processes that survivors can trust from the moment they report an assault to the final verdict.
Consistent accountability sends a clear social message about what a society will and will not tolerate. When harmful behaviour is met with meaningful social and legal consequences, it reinforces the belief that such acts will be challenged and taken seriously. However, when our reactions are inconsistent, delayed, or focused on the wrong aspects, these conversations gradually fade from view, while the conditions that enable such behaviour remain unchanged.
This does not mean accountability alone can eliminate rape cases. Rape is a complex issue shaped by various factors such as gender inequality, cultural attitudes, failures in the justice system, harmful social norms, and individual behavior. However, accountability shifts the focus to how society responds to harmful behaviour, rather than simply recognising it as “wrong”.
With that, I leave you with a question: If awareness tells us that a problem exists, what are we doing to ensure that our response actually changes it?
Vidhi Kaloya
