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India's Intimate Partner Violence Demands an All-in Response

Intimate violence remains a pervasive silent crime which most girls and women either experience but do not report or have the possibility to report to police.

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Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate violence remains a pervasive silent crime which most girls and women either experience but do not report or have the possibility to report to police. | Sneha Sivarajan | Credits Unplash Licence

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India is behind in handling intimate partner violence. Getting on top of the problem requires reform in law, health policy and changing attitudes.

India's official tracking of intimate partner violence has some evident flaws.

It is often measured through the lens of family or domestic violence.  But intimate partner violence encompasses so much more. 

It may involve physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm for vulnerable persons of any gender, from their current or former partners. It often goes beyond the interpersonal. It can harm multiple people at once and impact generations.

Yet in India, researchers often assume that intimate partner violence mostly involves violence inflicted by husbands towards women in their marital home.

Around the world, women and girls bear a disproportionate burden of intimate partner violence. Violence against unmarried girls in their family homes by brothers, fathers, uncles and cousins is common, though it is often repressed and legitimised as the natural behaviour of violent men.

Violence against people of alternative genders in their intimate relationships has not received the focus it deserves, due to taboos and the law's exclusive focus on marriage and its violent experience for women in India.

The experience of intimacy in marriage for girls and women in India is often defined by their secondary status and unequal power relationships between genders, age hierarchies and the ritual status of groom and bride's families  and caste hierarchies.

There is widespread reporting of girls' powerlessness and vulnerability in childhood. It happens due to cultural practices, such as son preference, sex selection, discrimination and a lack of investment in education and other

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