The Scientific Indian

National Study on Child Abuse here (200 pages report). I haven't read it fully. A few things I noted: My home state Tamilnadu was not part of the survey - of the southern states, Andhra and Kerala are. The summary shown below is a slap in the face of any society that lets such atrocities happen to its children.

I read a related post via reddit that got me thinking.

Take a predominantly patriarchal society - like all other societies of , well, almost all times; let this society wither time and space like no other over a few thousand years; let social cohesion be defined by fluid but loosely coherent religious sentiments and gods; let identity be defined by the failures of societies other than itself; let the world rediscover liberty, equality, and the many other good, bad and ugly ities; let the world then come to the rescue of Others still in the dark ages, or at the very least dark-skinned.

Still with me? Good. Now, after a few decades when all the dust has settled, let a mild mannered abuse-fearing reporter from an island that ruled this society go check on a report about women. The Indian government wants to place Child abuse on the National Agenda. A laudable goal. There is someone with moral fibre in the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Who is this reporter? What did he say? Wait no more. I give you Peter Foster, a reporter at Telegraph. Peter Foster professes his desire for a useful discussion on the report he is writing about. But how do you write a post that draws a discussion and not the decorated sword? That's a hundred comments question.

I'm always suspicious of such surveys - it's too hard to be sure of the conditions of the questioning and the testimony of children on such sensitive matters - but the data does reveal disturbing trends.

As a foreigner, it's not uncommon to hear Indians voicing their superiority about the strength of the Indian family unit when compared to the fractured society of the West.