The shock waves from the pack-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi continue to reverberate in India and around the world. The pathology of rape is not rooted in local culture. A nation does not rise in collective revulsion at normal but rather at unacceptable behavior.
The explanation for the rape epidemic lies in accumulating failures of governance. Successive governments have responded to crises with patchwork solutions, postponing structural reforms to tomorrow. That tomorrow has arrived with a vengeance and the government is at a loss on what to do.
There are four reasons for the extraordinary outpouring of anger: This attack was particularly horrific and savage. It was perpetrated on the streets of the nation's capital in a bus that drove through several police checkpoints. The victim was representative of the new aspirational India. And she proved remarkably fearless in fighting her attackers, and tenacious in clinging to life and hope that evoked admiration for her courage.