Why Women's Safety Funding Has Not Ensured Safer Cities

The Indian Constitution guarantees formal equality to women through Article 14, Article 15(3), which allows the State to make special provisions for women and children, and Article 21, interpreted by courts to include bodily autonomy and dignity. The 2012 Delhi gang rape case was a turning point in converting these guarantees into concrete policy. It led to the Justice J S Verma Committee, whose report argued that sexual violence stems from patriarchal control rather than individual criminality alone. Its recommendations shaped the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, which widened the definition of sexual offences and introduced fast-track courts. The same period saw the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (POSH) Act, 2013 and the creation of the Nirbhaya Fund, a non-lapsable corpus meant to finance women's safety infrastructure and programmes across states.

Over the following decade, government agencies used a large share of this fund on help desks in police stations and fast-track courts. Cities such as Chennai, Surat and Bhubaneswar also set up gender labs to study how urban design could make public spaces safer. Despite this sustained legal and financial investment, incidents of sexual violence and harassment in public spaces continue to occur, prompting a fresh look at where the policy chain is actually breaking down.