National Annual Report & Index on Women’s Safety (NARI) 2025

General Studies Paper-2

Context

• The National Annual Report & Index on Women’s Safety (NARI) 2025, released by the National Commission for Women (NCW), provides a city-wise ranking of women’s safety in India.

Key highlights from NARI 2025

• Safest cities: Kohima, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Aizawl, Gangtok, Itanagar, Mumbai.
• Least safe cities: Patna, Jaipur, Faridabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Srinagar, Ranchi.
  • The national safety score was pegged at 65 per cent, serving as the benchmark for assessing city performance.
• In 2024, 7 per cent of women experienced harassment in public spaces, while the figure rose to 14 per cent among women under the age of 24, indicating greater vulnerability in younger demographics.
• Neighbourhoods (38 per cent) and public transport (29 per cent) emerged as the most reported hotspots of harassment for women.
• Only 25 per cent of women expressed confidence that authorities would act effectively on complaints related to safety and harassment.

Barriers to Gender-Safe Cities

• Institutional and governance deficits: Multiple agencies functioning in silos, leading to weak enforcement of women’s safety measures.
  • Slow judicial response: Delayed investigations and prolonged trials dilute deterrence, allowing repeat offences.
• Transport vulnerabilities: Overcrowded buses, unsafe last-mile connectivity and limited female staff in transport services increase insecurity.
• Under-reporting: Only one in three women report incidents, reflecting both social stigma and weak trust in authorities.
• Persistence of patriarchal norms: Social attitudes trivialise harassment and often shift blame to women, discouraging complaints.
• Over-reliance on data: Official statistics fail to capture perception-based insecurities, which remain invisible in policy frameworks.

Government Initiatives for Women Safety

• Nirbhaya Fund: Ministry of Women and Child Development has established the fund for financing safety projects across the country.
• SHe-Box Portal: Launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Sexual Harassment Electronic Box (SHe-Box) is an initiative to provide a single-window platform for women to register workplace sexual harassment complaints.
• It is accessible to all women, regardless of their work sector (organized/unorganized, public/private).
• Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013, applies to all women, regardless of age, job type, or work sector.
• It mandates employers to create an Internal Committee (IC) in workplaces with over 10 employees, while the Appropriate Government sets up Local Committees (LCs) for smaller organizations or cases against employers.

Way Ahead

• Short-term Measure:
  • Integrate 24×7 women helplines with local police, ambulance and municipal services for coordinated response.
  • Conduct rapid compliance audits of POSH arrangements in large employers and publish anonymised compliance statuses.
• Medium-term measure:
  • Make gender audits mandatory under central urban schemes and link city grants to measurable safety indices.
  • Upgrade public transport with mandatory CCTV, grievance redressal timelines and operator accountability.
• Long-term Measure:
  • Launch multi-year gender-sensitisation programmes across schools, colleges and workplaces with measurable behavioural outcomes.
  • Embed gender-sensitivity in police training and evaluation, and promote men’s programmes that challenge patriarchal norms.
• Invest in community-led safety initiatives that rebuild trust between citizens and institutions.