STC EXCLUSIVE: The Forgotten Meaning of “Environment”
What are we doing to make our neighbourhoods safer for children? Protecting a child is not somebody else’s duty. It is ours.
Dr. Fiaz Maqbool Fazili
Child abuse is not merely a crime problem. It is a warning about the environment we are creating around them. A child in Budgam. Another, barely into adolescence, in Bandipora.
Different places. Different circumstances. But the same unbearable question: How many warnings does a society need before it stops merely reacting and starts preventing
The latest reported sexual-assault case involving a 12-year-old girl in Bandipora has once again produced the familiar sequence—shock, anger, demands severe punishment, social-media outrage and public assurances that justice will be done.
The police did their job. The accused was arrested. Is the story over?
A few days of outrage. Thousands of comments. Anger, abuse, demands for every imaginable punishment—and then, just 48 hours later, try searching for those posts.
Silence. As “Tina Samavar“ (Kashmiri hot kettle made of tin) – aptly put it, as metaphor “Kashmiri has a short memory.” We boil over quickly, rage intensely, and then cool down just as fast. Until the next incident. Until the next tragedy. Until another victim becomes the subject of our collective outrage. And then the cycle begins all over again. We react. We rage. We forget. We move on.
Perhaps the real question is not how loudly we reacted—but “what changed after the noise died down? Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has rightly described the incident as a shame and demanded immediate arrest and severe punishment of those responsible. Police reportedly arrested two accused persons within hours and registered a case under relevant provisions.
But after the headlines disappear, viral videos have scarcely any viewers a harder question remains: Will anything actually change this time? We have been here before.
When the Budgam tragedy involving a preteen girl shook the conscience of Kashmir, there was outrage. There were protests. There were condemnations. There were demands for justice and exemplary punishment. And then, gradually, the noise subsided.
If another child can become a victim today, perhaps we need to ask whether our collective response yesterday was strong enough—or merely temporary.
Punishment after a crime is necessary. Deterrence before the next crime is even more important. But there is a question we rarely ask: Why do different crimes carry different punishments? And what message does each punishment actually send to society? If the same—or similar—crime keeps recurring despite arrests, investigations, trials and punishments, then perhaps we need to look beyond the individual offender. Isn’t , Something is missing here either in the structure or process or both.Is it the certainty of punishment? The speed of justice? The adequacy of punishment? Weak investigation? Poor rehabilitation? Or the absence of effective preventive mechanisms?
Arresting the accused may close one chapter. Speedy arrest adds another dimension—the efficiency and efficacy with which our police and law-enforcement agencies respond to crime. But arrest alone does not necessarily prevent the next crime. The real test of any criminal-justice system is not merely “how quickly it catches the accused, but how effectively it deters the next offender.” If the same crime keeps recurring, something is clearly missing. We need to identify that missing link—not simply repeat the same response after every tragedy. Perhaps it is time for the review of “judiciary, police, prosecutors, prison authorities and other law-enforcement agencies to sit together—not merely after a tragedy, but before the next one—and identify the missing link.
Then ask the harder question: What must change so that punishment is not merely retribution after the crime, but deterrence before the next one? Because if crimes keep recurring, “we should not only ask, “Who committed it?” We must also ask, “What failed to prevent it?”
The question we hesitate to ask: Why is sexual violence against children occurring with such disturbing frequency? There is no single answer. It can involve predatory individuals, broken families, substance abuse, pornography, poor supervision, distorted ideas of masculinity, lack of sex education, weak community vigilance, inadequate protection mechanisms, silence around abuse and the dangerous assumption that “such things do not happen in our society. “They do. And pretending otherwise only gives predators an advantage. We must also resist the temptation to blame the victim, her clothes, her family, her movements or her presence in a particular place.
The responsibility for sexual violence lies with the perpetrator. A pre-teen child going to Darsgah (religious school) with holy book Quran in hand does not invite abuse. A child does not cause abuse. A child cannot be expected to understand or negotiate the intentions of an adult predator.
From outrage to prevention: Our response to these incidents often begins too late. We demand that police arrest the accused speedily. We demand fast-track trials. We demand severe punishment—even capital punishment in the gravest cases. This should not be dismissed as an emotional, knee-jerk reaction. When a crime is heinous and repeatedly shakes society’s conscience, there is a legitimate demand for justice that is swift, proportionate and carries a strong message of accountability and retribution. But punishment has another purpose: “deterrence”.
The question, therefore, is not simply how harshly we punish after a crime. It is whether the certainty, speed and visibility of that punishment are strong enough to make the next potential offender think twice.If crimes continue to recur despite arrests, trials and punishments, we must have the courage to ask a legitimate question:” What are we missing?
Perhaps the judiciary, police, prosecution, prison and other law-enforcement agencies need to sit together—not merely to respond to the last crime, but to understand what failed to prevent the next one.
Have We asked the “Six Whys”. These are all legitimate demands. But perhaps we also need to ask a more fundamental question:
- Where is the prevention architecture?.
- Where are systematic child-safety programmes in schools?
- Where are trained counsellors and safeguarding officers?
- Where are confidential reporting mechanisms that children can actually trust?
- Where is the training of teachers, transport workers, health workers, religious leaders and community volunteers to recognise warning signs?
- Where is the sustained public campaign teaching children one simple, life-saving message: “If something feels wrong, speak up. You will be heard. You will be believed. You will be protected.”
Punishment deals with the crime after it happens. Prevention tries to stop it from happening in the first place. We need both. No adult has the right to touch you inappropriately—and if something happens, you will be believed and protected? We speak endlessly about protecting our children from traffic accidents, contaminated food, polluted water and unsafe buildings. Why should protection from sexual predators be treated as a lesser public-health responsibility?
A reminder on the re- learning the meaning of “environment. I am increasingly confused by the word “environmentalist.” The term seems to have acquired too many claimants that its meaning itself is becoming blurred. I wish to attend one of their sessions on environmental concerns. To relearn, what do we really mean by “environment”? We often reduce the word to trees, forests, fauna, rivers and lakes. But the meaning of “environment” is far broader. The environment in which we live also includes our “social surroundings”, —the quality of civil society, public behaviour, discipline, cleanliness, civic responsibility, safety and the way people interact with one another. So perhaps my understanding of an “environmentalist” also needs to evolve. Protecting a lake while ignoring the civic behaviour that pollutes it is only part of the job. Planting trees while tolerating indiscipline, littering, noise, encroachment and disregard for public spaces leaves the larger environment untouched. To me it was our environment not merely what surrounds us in nature; it is also the social and civic space we create around ourselves. Perhaps environmentalism should therefore be understood not merely as protecting nature, but as protecting the quality of the environment—natural, social and civic—in which human beings live.
We rightly protest against encroachments, garbage, polluted lakes, traffic congestion, disappearing wetlands and ecological destruction. These are important battles. But environment is not only what surrounds the body. It is also what surrounds the mind. A child grows within a social environment. If vulgarity is normalised, violence becomes entertainment, pornography is accessible at the touch of a screen, substance abuse spreads, children are left without supervision, predators are quietly tolerated, families discourage children from speaking about abuse, and communities protect reputations more fiercely than children—then we have created a toxic social environment.
The concerns on moral decline, rising crime and sexual violence—whose agenda, or in whose domain they are inclusive, aren’t these apolitical issues the concern of “conscious, concerned citizens and civil society”, or do we want to push these issues into the State’s bag as well? The State certainly has its responsibilities—law enforcement, justice, governance and institutional safeguards. But “the moral and social health of a community cannot be outsourced to the State.” If we keep treating every uncomfortable social problem as someone else’s department, we are not solving it—we are simply “passing the responsibility somewhere away or buck around.” Perhaps the more uncomfortable question/s is: When did we begin treating moral decline, rising crime and sexual violence as someone else’s agenda—or automatically pushing them into the State’s domain? The State has its responsibilities. But civil society has its own space, its own voice and its own responsibilities. Where are our sustained, apolitical civic conversations, and advocacy? We all claim to be concerned citizens speaking before a tragedy, rather than only reacting afterwards? Where are community-led efforts to prevent harm, protect the vulnerable and strengthen social responsibility? Perhaps the question is not only “What is the State doing? “It is also: What are we doing—as citizens, as communities and as civil society? Prevention begins at home. Parents must create an atmosphere where children can speak without fear of being scolded, disbelieved or blamed. A child who fears punishment may remain silent—and silence is precisely what predators depend upon. Parents should know who interacts with their children, who transports them, who supervises them and what digital spaces they occupy. But supervision should not become suffocation. Children need knowledge, confidence and trusted adults—not merely restrictions. Schools, too, must look beyond examinations. Personal safety should be part of a child’s education. Teachers need to recognise warning signs—sudden withdrawal, unexplained fear, behavioural changes or deterioration in performance. Every institution dealing with children should have a functioning safeguarding system, not merely a policy on paper. Our “Civil society/s must look within, cannot remain confined to seminars, road protests, environmental campaigns or construction demands or press releases. NGOs, welfare organisations, mohalla committees, schools, religious bodies, child-protection groups and professional associations must also ask: What are we doing to make our neighbourhoods safer for children? Protecting a child is not somebody else’s duty. It is ours.
(The author is a Healthcare Quality & Patient Safety Professional | Public Health & Social Policy Commentator)
