Hindus Get United

We have a lot of people. Crimes always go proportional to population. In any society, you can assume one in 1000 will be crooks and criminals. If your whole nation is just 1 million people, you need to deal with only 1000 such crooks. If you have 1000 million people, you have a million potential criminals to deal with. Thus, you need to adjust all figures to population. Rapes are always under-reported everywhere (given that the majority of the rapes are done by close people). Even if you assume that 95% of the rapes are not reported in India, while 100% of rapes are reported in the West, India still has lower rapes as % of population. This is no excuse and thus let us move to the next 5 points.

We have too few police. India is among the least policed nation. We have only a little more than 1 cop for every 1000 people. Globally, this number is more than twice this. Most of our cops are taken off in protecting the politicians and bureaucrat. This leaves the number of cops less than the number of criminals. Do the math.

1. We have too few courts and judges. The Allahabad High Court has 160 judges to manage 100 million people or close to 1 for every million people. How can a judge handle such a workload? Thus, even if the cops catch the criminal, it takes a long time to bring him to justice. 
2. Legal system is backward. Our legal system is quite outdated. Rape and molestation laws are works in progress and are not quite near the global standards. Questions like how long the penis got inserted are asked of rape victims. This is stupid and causes many criminals to get acquitted and many victims to shy away. 
3. Our sex ratio is poor. For every 100 guys, there are only about 92 girls. In parts of Delhi, this ratio falls to 80 girls for every 100 guys. Thus, 20+ guys for every 100 will go unmarried. 1 out of this 20 could become very depressed and vengeful. 1 out of these 10 depressed bachelors could turn more violent. Do the math and that is a lot of potential violent people.
4. Indian women are forced in the dark for more. Due to a variety of reasons, ranging from a lack of good toilets in rural areas to outsourcing jobs that require work at night to a lack of good transportation, a lot more Indian women are forced to work out in the dark. Historically, dark, secluded areas have always attracted crime. World over, most of the murders and rapes occur this time. This would require us to dramatically upgrade the existing infrastructure - transportation and sanitation - so that less women are forced to be outside. Even better personal transportation could help the women with safer options.
5. Our media reports more actively: This is actually a positive thing. As mentioned here and observed by people who have lived both in and out of India - Why Rape Seems Worse in India Than Everywhere Else (but Actually Isn’t  - Indian media gives a greater importance to individual rape incidents than most other media around the world. This helps put the problem right in front of our eyes and hopefully that pushes us close to reducing the rates. Most of the rest of the world, avoids reporting gruesome rape incidents. 

These points are fundamental. While attitudes blah blah blah all are talked about, we have to first focus on things that are easy to fix. Adding more judges, toilets, police and fixing laws is not rocketscience and we need to do that before getting to "attitudes". 

Of course, point 1 is no excuse for us to stay quiet. We need to be the best country when it comes to women safety. To see some of the solutions go here:What is the best way to deal with the degrading condition of women in India?

1. Indian women have to get politically active

The problem starts with the women. Close to half of our voters are women. But, they have never ensured that their issues are top of any party's agenda. Modiji has showed that even with 31% of the votes you could sweep the nation. If the nation's women vote en masse in a single direction, they could sweep the nation. This could help in putting gender issues at a higher level of priority. For that they need to get on the politics. Forget about handouts like 33% reservation of seats, but be more assertive in taking 50% of the seats straight out. (I could see the discrepancy even in the upvotes this answer got ;-))

2. Gender issues a national priority

In India, we are experts at fighting imaginary and irrelevant battles. For instance, this whole specter of Article 370 & Kashmir or getting a permanent membership at the UNSC. Those issues are clearly way low important compared with the gigantic issues ahead of us. Our government and society is spending wasted mental cycles on those. We are worried about China's military encircling us or Pakistani terrorists destroying us. 

Every day our rapists & murderers kill more than the terrorists kill with bombs in a year and way more than what China's or Pakistan's armies have ever killed. Throughout Indian history, we always see that our enemies are seldom outside. No external power can impact India, if India is sound inside. 

Building a strong economy and providing a strong law & order that ensures both men & women can walk safe should have way higher priority than anything else. Solutions can be made only when priorities are right. 

3. Legal Reforms

Our legal system is neither built on our ancient past nor the modern principles in rest of the world. Instead, it is stuck in the murky past of the 19th century Victorian morals. From anti-gay laws to handling juvenile murderers to marital rape - a bunch of Indian laws are a relic of the past & we need to substantially reform. Implementing Verma committee reforms will be a start. 

4. A modern police force

Our police force is woefully few and woefully under-trained.  Less than 5% of this small force are women. We need to more than double our police force to even get to a world average (about 1 policeman for every 500 people). We are ahead of only Uganda when it comes to the number of police personnel per capita. And a lot of these police are taken away for protecting politicians and bureaucrats.Of the rest, most are untrained and uneducated. We need to build a modern police force that understand the plights of women and build a lot of them. They need to patrol a lot in crime hotspots and where women go a lot. Not enough cops to combat Mumbai menace and The New York Times.

5. More courts and fast tracking legal process

Our legal system is swamped. This is why main criminals go Scott-free. We need to dramatically increase the number of judges and courts and cut a lot of redtape in the way of fast tracking legal proceedings. There are 32 million pending cases in India!!

Against a sanctioned strength of 17,715 judges, more than 3,300 posts are vacant. Though the apex court has set a target of taking the combined strength of the judiciary to 30,000 in five years, the target looks difficult . This has already resulted in huge pendency of cases. Currently, there are more than 3.20 crore pending cases in different courts. Of this, nearly 2.76 crore cases are in subordinate courts while 44 lakh are pending in various HCs and nearly 60,000 in the Supreme Court.

Govt tells Supreme Court it will appoint 50 more judges at Allahabad high court

6. Better employment

Close to 10% of our youth is unemployed. This is clearly unacceptable in a fast growing economy. Young, Jobless and Indian. A lot of these are loitering around bus stops, tea shops and molesting ongoers. As the old saying goes - "an idle mind is a devil's workshop". Building a national level skills program and ensuring that the unemployment falls below 5% will make sure that many of the idle minds are taken off the streets.  

7. Better data collection

For a nation priding on being a tech leader, our government is stuck in 17th century technology. We don't have an easy way to record, track and map crimes happening all over the nation. We need to have real time statistics about various characteristics of crime and track them on various attributes. As the old saying goes, "what you can't measure, you can't improve". 

8. National level emergency infrastructure

We need an equivalent of US 911 that anyone in India can call for any emergency. Our existing emergency system is woefully inadequate. Women in danger should be able to call help at the push of a button. Metadata from the calls should be transparently reported and any inaction on a emergency call should be grounds for suspension of the local police group. 

9. Better preparation at the grassroots

Indian women are mostly unprepared when they are walking on deserted streets. From learning self-defense techniques, to keeping simple weapons to being more situationally aware to walking in groups, people have to take a better handle of their own security. Indian neighborhoods also have build formal "citizen watch groups" to patrol the streets. Neighborhood watch

10. Make it illegal to condone or glorify rape

One of the senior politicians - Mulayam Singh Yadav - was caught on tape saying on the lines of  "Boy will be boys. Young men rape". Such people should be spending time behind the bars. We have no use of such politicians and they are harmful to Indian society. Modi should also make sure he fires people like Babulal Gaur in his own party (Babulal Gaur puts foot in mouth again, backs SP). Extend "hate crime laws" to these.