October 26 marks the first anniversary of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. The law was conceived as a civil law as distinct from the existing criminal law: Section 498A IPC. It was often said that criminal law had no space for settlement of disputes and could give no relief beyond a conviction. It was to meet this need that the new law was passed.

It provided for the right to residence in the shared household, the right to protection orders, gave power to courts to restrain alienation of assets, mandated return of stridhan and other significant reliefs. It defines violence in all its dimensions, from the physical to the sexual and economic. This definition was taken from the UN Model Code on domestic violence and from the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women, to which India is a party. It applies not only to married women but also women in live-in relationships, daughters/mothers facing violence in domestic relationships.

One year is an appropriate time to evaluate the functioning of a law. However, there are no systems to do this on a systematic basis since there are no computerised data bases of orders and judgments. Given this, the Lawyers Collective, which was largely involved with this law in its formative stages, undertook the task of evaluating enforcement, using available data. The chief justice of India facilitated the collection of data from different high courts. Our report, ‘Staying Alive’, is based on this.

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