India’s booming dark data economy
Indian laws, especially concerning marriage and divorce are extremely skewed towards women, in the sense that "its her word against yours" is almost a law unto itself.Not long ago, a woman could go to a police station, give a complaint against her husband and family, and her husband, his relatives, even those living in other cities or even states had to be put in jail. There were numerous cases where educated urban women had their in laws families, including aging grandmothers put in jail, that was widely amplified by the media. This law, numbered 498a, wreaked havoc in the nation. The law was non bailable and once applied, cannot be withdrawn, even if the complainant wants to do so.So you had a situation where, some urban women misused this law, causing whole families to be put in jail, without even as much as a preliminary enquiry, leading to chaos and a sure shot way for the marriage to breakdown. In a country where going to jail holds a lot of social stigma, no husband would ever want to reconcile with a wife who sent him to jail.The law was, in intent, aimed at protecting vulnerable women, and in that intent, if used correctly, acts as a powerful deterrent to domestic violence, especially in rural areas.However, for almost a decade, it was mainly used by urban and semi urban, educated women as a revenge tactic. The results in conviction rates, less than 5% for these cases, and the rapid increase in their numbers, lead to calls for reform. About 2 years back, the Supreme Court of India gave judgements & directed police departments to stop automatic arrests in such cases and only to make arrests after detailed enquiry. It observed that the intent of law was to reconcile and rehabilitate broken marriages due to domestic violence, but has now become a tool to harass husbands.No wonder the society and men, especially ones with assets and reputations to lose, started to resort to such measures to protect themselves from false cases.Edit : I would also like to add that normal divorce laws are also skewed towards women. They get favorable rulings in alimony, asset distribution, etc. Many of these 498a cases ended up being petty quarrels, where the wife wants to exact revenge, this was observed by Supreme Court too. The women did get their revenge by making their husband's families churn through the Indian court systems which are notorious for being slow and draining people financially, however, over-zealous usage and application of the law lead to dilution of a powerful law against those who actually suffer from domestic violence.