Castrating Sex Offenders

Every time there’s a conversation about what an appropriate punishment for rape is, someone is bound to talk about how castration is the answer.

A Louisiana Senate Committee seemed to agree when it considered castration to supplement (and not to supplant) punishment in cases of ‘aggravated rape, sexual battery, selling pornography that shows minors under 17 years old, incest, simple kidnapping of children under the age of 14, and child abuse’. [1]

The castration envisaged is through the use of a drug called MPA (medroxyprogestrone acetate) although an offender may choose physical castration.

The bill is by Senator Nick Gautreaux, an Abbeville Democrat, and will now go to the full Senate.

Links:
[1] 2theadvocate.com/news/17412114.html
[2] nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/senate_panel_approves_bill_req.html
[3] foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348171,00.html

IMBRA

Here’s an article about immigrant women which is also a case of plagiarism that has been called out by Sylvia in a way I’ve never seen before. Apparently, the author of the article appropriated almost all her ideas from someone else.

“If you ever want to despair of the human condition, Google the term “IMBRA” — the vast majority of the results returned are authored by men outraged at these entirely reasonable measures that keep men from beating their immigrant wives and using green cards as leverage to perpetuate the violence. Strangely, few of these websites argue that men should be given the direct right to beat women, but it’s hard to imagine what other worldview they could be operating under, when they think that it should be perfectly legal for a man to threaten his wife with deportation if she leaves him after a round of beating. If you are under the incorrect impression that sexism is dead and feminism isn’t needed anymore, I recommend listening to the howls of men who think the government owes them the right to treat immigrant women like a population available for their punching bag and sexual assault needs. That goes double for you if you’ve ever sneered at the term “intersections of oppression,” because I can’t think of a better example myself.“

Sylvia says that all original ideas in this excerpt from an article called ‘Sexual Abuse Fueled by Abusive Immigration Language‘ remain unlinked. She’s given the same treatment to the whole article in her blog.

I’d never heard of IMBRA so I googled the term. It turns out that it’s the ‘International Marriage Brokers Regulation Act’ — a federal Act which became law along with VAWA in 2006 and is designed to protect non-American women from American men by requiring men’s backgrounds to be disclosed to women whom they approach through paid international marriage brokers.

Source: Problem Chylde: Nerdy but Mighty (and Still Learning)

Guest Post: Real Nightmares

This post was written by Aban Mukherji in 2006. It speaks of a domestic violence incident which involved an acid attack and describes the author’s reaction to it.
How can one deal with experiences that cross the borders of language?
Yesterday my friend Vijaya, an experienced medical social worker at the J—- Hospital, baldly described the trauma of a patient. The ’sweet-looking young girl’ was brought from Pune to the J—- Hospital in Mumbai in a Sumo, crouched on her hands and knees on the floor of the vehicle for four hours. “She couldn’t sit,” said Vijaya, matter of factly, “because her buttocks were on fire.” I felt a band of steel grip my forehead, even before Vijaya started narrating the sequence of events, which brought this girl-wife across the threshold of the hospital. “A few weeks ago, her husband, who periodically tortured her, threw acid on her private parts, then inserted a bottle of Vicks VapoRub into her vagina before having sex with her. You should have seen her condition two weeks ago. It was horrible!” and Vijaya’s face puckered in a ghastly grimace. “Her pelvic region and buttocks are covered with huge sores and boils. But today she seems a little better. She will pull through”.
“Her pain was so great that she barely remembered crawling out of the house on her hands and knees. Her neighbours refused to come to her aid. How she reached her sister’s home is anybody’s guess. The police refused to register an FIR and S—- Hospital closed their doors on her.
In desperation she was brought all the way from Pune to J—- Hospital – her private parts, a mass of burnt flesh.” “But her face is so pretty and untouched,” she concluded. “And nothing has been done to arrest the husband. That psychopath is still at large! Dr. D—-, the head of the Gynaecological Dept is reluctant to allow reporters to interview the girl though the —- correspondent has managed to see her in Ward 32 of the hospital!”
After Vijaya left, my mother and I watched part of Schindler’s List. How could one put into words what the victims of brutality on such a vast scale had suffered? Even personal suffering, on a very modest scale, seems to freeze one into silence. Perhaps Vijaya’s tale, and Schindler’s List together proved too strong a dose for me and the horror brought on the old, familiar, nightmare which used to haunt me a few years ago, when I had come face to face with a woman whose face was a ghastly mesh of scars, eyeballs bulging out of their sockets, a mouth without lips with protruding teeth, cheeks, neck and shoulders a mass of raw, burnt flesh—the victim of an acid attack. She was standing on the overbridge spanning Queen’s Road. As I hurried past her, our eyes interlocked. I could not fathom their expression as they bored into mine. Was it pain, despair, detachment or utter numbness? I stumbled down the steps, feeling giddy and nauseous.
That night I dreamt that acid had been thrown on my face. I could not recognize myself. I knew I was me, but who was I? ” I know who I am.” I went on proclaiming to myself, hysterically. But I could not identify myself with that ghastly image and if I could not accept that image as myself, then, I was not ‘I’. In my dream, I distinctly remember covering myself with a sheet from head to foot. If I could not see myself and no one could see me, then, perhaps, I could be me. I awoke feeling hot and feverish, grateful to see my face unscarred.
Last night, I again dreamt of an acid attack. This time I was given a choice—your face or your vagina. I shielded my face with both arms, screaming, begging, pleading to spare my face. If my face went “I” would be snuffed out. I woke up with the shrill ring of the alarm before I could clearly articulate my choice. I lay quietly in the dark, knowing I would protect my face at all cost because I would not be able to bear the rejection reflected in the eyes of others. What could be covered and hidden could be denied but the denial of oneself by others would be unbearable.
Published with the author’s permission.

Colin Read

This picture was uploaded on to Flickr August 27, 2007 by IreneKaoru and published under a CC Licence.
Related reading : http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/aug/24/ukcrime.gender

Why Does She Stay?

The Navhind Times [1] reported that a man named Motiar was sentenced to just eight months in jail for attempting to murder his wife, Tumpa Bibi, ostensibly because she pleaded that he be let off and the court believed that there existed the possibility of their living a happy life together. He had set her on fire and left her with 36% burns just 28 days into their marriage according to the paper.
Personally, I think that every time a woman decides to stay with an abusive man, it’s an example of hope triumphing over experience (though not in the sense Dr. Johnson meant it). In one of the books in the Princess series, Jean Sasson and her anonymous collaborator had said something to the effect of: Once a dog’s let you see its tail crooked, don’t expect it to straighten it out because it won’t. I couldn’t agree more.
In an article by Evan Stark called ‘The Entrapment Enigma‘ [2] in the OUP USA blog, the author said:

“The psychiatric establishment in the 1970s believed women brought abuse on themselves because they were “masculine,” “frigid,” “overemotional” with “weakened ties to reality,” or had “inappropriate sexual expression.” But by the late 1980s, the “myth of masochism” and other transparent accounts that blamed the “wife-beater’s wife” for her abuse had been widely discredited, in no small part because of the work of feminist mental health professionals . Empirical work by psychologists and social workers had demonstrated that battered women had a better sense of reality than their assailants and, compared to nonbattered women, were actually more “social,” more “sympathetic,” less “masculine” though not necessarily more feminine, exhibited greater ego strength, and employed a greater range of strategies to change their situation than nonbattered women in distressed relationships.”

The question which has remained, however, is why battered woman stay in an abusive relationships. In her book ‘Trauma and Recovery’, Judith Lewis Herman wrote, “Prolonged, repeated trauma, by contrast, occurs only in circumstances of captivity. When the victim is free to escape, she will not be abused a second time; repeated trauma occurs only when the victim is a prisoner, unable to flee, and under the control of the perpetrator.”
Being unable to flee, to use the author’s words, I suspect, is a result of four factors:
1. Practical Difficulties
such as being financially dependant on the abuser and having nowhere to live
2. Social Conditioning
such as believing that a woman’s value as an individual is derived from her ability to ‘keep’ a man which is reinforced by living in a societies where women will be looked down on for supposedly failing to do so
3. Personal Beliefs such as those where a woman is unable to believe that she is worthy of being treated with either respect or kindness as a result of having had her self-esteem torn to shreds by being abused
4. Institutional Responses
such as finding it difficult to convince police to file charges against the perpetrator, not having access to shelters, knowing that courts are unlikely to convict the perpetrator.
Knowing that women may have reasons (which seem entirely sensible) for staying in abusive situations though doesn’t stop me from feeling ill every time I hear about a woman who has actually done so.

Links:
[1] http://www.navhindtimes.com/articles.php?Story_ID=031755
[2] http://blog.oup.com/2007/06/violence/

Crime Against Women

Incidentally, I’ve revived the NotJustStatistics blog which I ran till 2006. I’m not entirely certain why since it seems like an exercise in fultility but here it is anyway:

Four Dimensional Vertigo

at http://4dvertigo.wordpress.com/

For those of you who’ve never seen the blog, it primarily contains links to articles which deal with crime against women in India although it focusses on cases which involve Sections 498 A and 304 B of the Indian Penal Code. I try to include the name and the age of the woman involved in each case.I don’t update it very frequently but if you come across a story you’d like to see included, please mail it to me. And if, for some reason, the blog annoys you, please do not mail me. Just to be clear, I don’t want to hear from anyone who belongs to a group that calls itself ‘Saving Indian Family / Society / Husbands / Marriages / Culture’ , ‘Injured Husbands’ , ‘NRI Victims’ or anything else along those lines.While I do realise that the Section i.e. 498 A contains no provision to ensure that women don’t lie, I don’t see that in itself as a reason to do away with the law entirely.

Memory

I’d written (and published) this ages ago:

The Girl in Hyacinth Blue. There were those who called her ‘Morning Shine’. She sits by a window with sunlight gently sweeping over her. Her serenity as the world passes by her seems overwhelming. Can anyone ever do that in real life? Blood seeping on to the floor; thicker than water, it does not spread out, only to merge again to form grotesque but interesting patterns as it spills over. Distorted reflections make their appearance in water like that. Hoping to be able to decipher a meaning which, in your heart, you know doesn’t even exist in the strange aberrations strewn on the dark black granite around you, you stare at them for what seems like an aeon and thank God for them. You do not want to see reality: it is too bleak. Hallucinations and lies are your respite from pain. Anything seems easier than the truth, and almost everything is.The patterns look like modern art if you stretch your imagination far enough except for the fact that you’re certain that they’ve been randomly created by a lunatic. You can almost hear his raucous laughs echoing in the background.The laughter doesn’t stop and you begin to realize that it isn’t your imagination playing tricks at all. You have to go back and face them: after all, they personify what your life has become. ‘The Girl in Hyacinth Blue’ never was anything more than a novel. There still is blood mixed with water on the bathroom floor as you begin to make your way towards the door.

Also, here’s one of my favourite pieces on relationships: http://www.authorzone.com/view_stories.php?storyid=

The News

Reading the RBI Act. The news playing in the background. Not really paying attention to it but this is what I’ve heard of in the last 40 minutes or so:

Young British girl who supposedly drowned was apparently raped and murdered — her mother claims that the police are trying to cover up the crime

30 year old woman shackled for seven years by her parents supposedly because of being mentally ill

Man married 6 women in 3 years to torture them for dowry with the aid of his parents
Woman killed due to domestic violence

Ugh!

'Herland'

Debs from The Burning Times writes about Umoja:
“In 1990, Rebecca Lolosoli founded a women-only village in Kenya called Umoja (”unity” in Kiswahili). The village was first established by 15 women, and by 2005 the number of women living there had risen to 48. The village is a refuge for women fleeing their husband’s abuse. The women survive by selling their brightly-coloured bead necklaces to tourists, and this has been so successful that the village has even come under attack from jealous local men.”
It’s an inspiring story.

Links:

[1] Umoja Uaso women group: http://www.jambosafaris.com/umojacharity.htm

[2] Debs’ post: http://burningtimes1645.blogspot.com/2008/02/umoja-women-only-village-in-kenya.html

[3] The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/16/wkenya16.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/16/ixworld.html

Domestic Violence Against Women and Children in the European Union

Violence against women is a violation of human rights. It is one of the few phenomena which cuts across every imaginable cultural, political, socio-economic, ethnic, religious and educational boundary. However, recognising that gender equity and social development are inseparable, fighting gender-based violence has become a priority for governments and international organisations all over the world even though, for much of history, many forms of violence such as domestic violence --- which this essay focuses on --- were not only ignored but also legally condoned.
The approach has changed and now, 'the human right to a private and family life is of special importance, but cannot be tolerated to condone private conduct within families in which one partner enforces dominance by violence over the other. The key human rights principle is that violence deliberately directed against any other person is never a purely private matter'. 1

1 The Legal Regime

1.1 The basis of domestic violence legislation

Violence against women is inextricably linked to issues of gender equality and gender mainstreaming. The preamble to the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women clearly locates the roots of gender-based violence in 'historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women, recognising that violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men'.
In the European Union, the Commission first started work on gender mainstreaming in the early 1990s by developing a more consistent approach following the 1995 Beijing UN Women's Conference2 which recognised 'violence against women' as a critical area of concern, acknowledged that violence against girls 'begins at the earliest stages of life and continues unabated throughout their lives', and reaffirmed commitments to the equal rights and inherent human dignity of women and men enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and other international human rights instruments such as the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Further, Article 2 of the EC Treaty states that the Community shall have as its task equality between men and women and Article 13 states that without prejudice to the other provisions of the (same) Treaty and within the limits of the powers conferred by it upon the Community, the Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament, may take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.

1.2 The definition of domestic violence

Domestic violence may be perpetrated by spouses, lineal ascendants and descendants and the lateral branch of the family up to the IV degree whether they are related by blood, marriage, fosterage or adoption, or by intimate partners or legal guardians.
Within the European Union, violence within families, right from the denigration of honour, is considered to be domestic violence and is covered under the general provisions of penal codes even if it not explicitly mentioned therein. Moreover, the laws themselves have been amended and harmonised so as to remove obstacles in tackling the issue.
For example, earlier definitions of rape exclusively spoke of extra-marital rape, and marital rape did not expressly constitute an offence (although it was possible to initiate action against it under assault laws). However, the term 'extra-marital' has now simply been deleted from the definition so as to include marital rape in the definition of rape and make it an offence in itself.
The spectrum of domestic violence (which, incidentally, has a high level of recidivism) may include psychological, physical, sexual, financial and emotional abuse which may manifest itself as physical injury, the deprivation of food, money or other resources, intimidation, humiliation and degradation, and may result in anhedonia, pain, exhaustion, isolation, alienation, depression, fear, and decreased levels of self-esteem, productivity and attentiveness. The law forbids any kind of violence (including seemingly innocuous forms of abuse such as nagging which is, just like any other form of abuse, one of the grounds of divorce in the case of violence which occurs within a marriage).

1.3 The procedure to deal with domestic violence

Domestic violence proceedings can be made speedy, and various injunctions which (depending on the country) may include Non-Molestation Orders and Occupation Orders can be obtained by victims. The Power of Arrest may be attached to an injunction if it is shown that the perpetrator has used violence or has threatened to do so and may do so again.
The legal nature of a Complaint may make those who are aware of an offence liable to be sanctioned if they do not report it to the authorities. Due to this, in practice, doctors who provide medical assistance to victims of domestic violence have a legal obligation to notify not the police but the public prosecutor's office directly (except in the UK where the police undertakes the investigation). The public prosecutor then conducts a suo moto investigation into the incident(s). The British Government, for example, explicitly says, "The NHS has a particular contribution to make in domestic violence, not only because of the impact on victims' health, but also because the NHS may be the first contact point with professionals who can recognise and intervene in the situation." Domestic violence may be concealed by victims but not by the authorities. The consent of victims is no longer essential to initiate action against perpetrators, and various advertising campaigns have been conducted to make people aware that 'the police will seek out men who abuse their partners and arrest them, even if the victim refuses to make a statement or give evidence'.3 The penalties are higher if the victim has special needs such as those of being pregnant, handicapped or disabled.

1.4 Judicial reconciliation

Taking into consideration high stress-levels, judicial reconciliation has been made available to deal with domestic violence: the perpetrator receives psychological therapy at a public hospital (for as long as councillors think is necessary) and promises not to repeat his behaviour. Penal sanctions are suspended for a period that may vary between three and four years (depending on the country). The councillors report the perpetrator's progress to the judge and if it is unsatisfactory, the judicial reconciliation will end and penal sanctions will resume as they have a retrospective effect. These provisions, however, do not apply to guardians, foster parents, and minders.

2 Measures in Support of Victims

2.1 Shelters for victims

Shelters, which provide a witness status to their guests, are set up by the State as well as other NGOs such as the Church and women's rights NGOs to protect of victims of domestic violence. There is also an option to provide them with immediate interim shelter (for 48 hours) even before a medical examination by the coroner.
The first modern women's shelter (which was established in Chiswick, England in 1971 by Erin Pizzey) developed out of an 'advice centre' for women and their children. Since then, the movement for shelters has grown and in 1986, the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities recommended that one shelter should be available for every 10000 people.

2.2 Domestic violence campaigns

The Commission has been conducting programmes and funding projects to raise awareness about violence and trafficking, to prevent them and to support victims. These include Daphne (2000-2003) and Daphne II (2004-08). The financial framework for the Daphne Programme was €20 million for the first phase and €50 million for the second phase. The programmes have tried to contribute towards ensuring a high level of physical and mental protection for children, young persons and women against violence (including sexual exploitation) by preventing violence and by providing support to victims especially in order to prevent their re-exposure to violence. They have also tried to promote closer co-operation between Member States and harmonise responses to these crimes although the principle of subsidiarity requires Member States to take measures to fight violence individually.4,5

References:
1. Reproductive health and human rights: integrating medicine, ethics and law(Cook, Dickens, Fathalla, Oxford, 2003, p 390)
2. Gender mainstreaming into practice
3. Metropolitan Police Service - Domestic Violence advertising campaign
4. Gender Mainstreaming and Gender based violence and trafficking in women
5. The Daphne Programme and The Daphne Programme

This post is an extract from an essay was written for the POROS Project.

Children and Domestic Violence

1 Children who witness domestic violence
The effects of domestic violence are not confined to its victims. Apart from the fact that children may try to intervene to protect adult victims (thus putting themselves in danger), children who witness domestic violence are more likely than others to develop psychological and social problems including stress-related disorders such as PTSD. They may be fearful and angry, and exhibit (both as children and as adults) internalized and externalized behavioral problems including withdrawal, hostility and substance dependency. Their relationships may also reflect violence learned or seen at home.
2 Violence against children
The reported instances of violence against children in the form of acts and omissions which endanger their physical or emotional health, well-being and development have increased over the last few decades. The primary forms of violence and abuse against children are neglect, exploitation and physical, sexual or emotional abuse, and they can have devastating consequences for victims both immediately and in the long-term.
Violence against children is completely illegal and schools, doctors and social workers have a duty to report suspicions of child abuse to the relevant legal authorities.
There appears to be no single, definitive cause of abusive behaviour against children. At one end of the scale, the number of officially recorded child murders has steadily risen over the years and 60% of those charged with these murders are the parents of the murdered children. According to John Keane, in many of these cases, it is clear that both the victims and the perpetrators are trapped in high tension zones 'where the conflict-ridden logics of the household (intimacy, sexual desire, identity formation, personal habits, marriage, money, housework and childcare) interact with, reinforce and often contradict virtually the same list of conflict-ridden logics of the labour market (with its additional special stresses and strains of employment, unemployment and underemployment) and its neighbouring criss-crossing social relations with the wider civil society'.
3 What Europeans think of domestic violence
The Teen Abuse Survey of Great Britain 2005 conducted by the NSPCC revealed that a third of teenage girls experienced or witnessed domestic violence at home but more than half of them did not consider this --- hitting, screaming and shouting --- to be domestic violence. 43% of teenagers thought that it was acceptable for a boyfriend to become aggressive and over 40% of all girls said that they would consider giving a boy a second chance if he hit them.
The general awareness about domestic violence in Europe appears to be high though; only 4% of Europeans said that they had never heard of domestic violence against women in the 1999 Eurobarometer Survey conducted by the Commission. The survey also divulged that 62% of Europeans considered domestic violence against women to be 'unacceptable in all circumstances and always punishable by law', 32% considered it 'unacceptable in all circumstances but not always punishable by law', 2% said that it was 'acceptable in certain circumstances' and, thankfully, only 0.7% believed that it was 'acceptable in all circumstances'.
This post is an extract from an essay was written for the POROS Project.

The Use and Misuse of Dowry Laws

Sometime ago, I found the following comment in the list waiting for approval before being displayed on my site.

Name : MisuseDowryLaws URL : http://misuseof498a.clawz.com Comment : Because of extremism displayed by some selected Feminists in India, there will be great fun in coming years. Please search for dowry 498a in google and find the emergence of a backlash and angryharry.com in India. E-mail : misuse498a@lycosyahoo.com

I was somehow rather surprised by it because whoever wrote it seems to associate Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code exclusively with Indian anti-dowry laws. I have, of course, often heard allegations of the section being misused but have very rarely heard any actual cases being cited to support such a claim.
In fact, a Tata Institute of Social Sciences study in 1999 indicates that few women's organisations recommend recourse to section 498A IPC as a first resort and that the number of such cases are miniscule in comparison to the prevalence of domestic violence. However, such studies have done little to stop a large spectrum of people ranging right from husbands and their families to some members of the judiciary from voicing their complaints.
There seem to be two sides to the story : one is that Indian society is patriarchal and public attitudes are firmly in favour of men and wives are usually held responsible for marital problems as the following statement in a report prepared by the legal adviser to the Delhi Commissioner of Police in November 2000 shows: "...the reasons for disharmony between the wife and the husband arise only when either the wife is reluctant/refuses to adjust herself in the family circumstances or if the husband feels reluctant to accommodate his wife either on account of unnecessary interference by the parents of the wife or non-cooperative attitude of the wife."
It would be hard for anyone to deny that domestic violence is rampant -- a look at any given day's edition of a local newspaper would probably report at least two cases of women who've been killed / burned to death by it. And those are just the most extreme cases. No one really knows how many instances of domestic violence go completely unnoticed and it seems faintly ridiculous to me to render useless one of the few laws which exist to combat it.
This, however, is precisely what the The (all male) Malimath Committee suggested in a way by recommending that such complaints be made bailable and compoundable. The committee produced a 600 page report which among other things included 16 research papers but for some reason excluded not only any discussion on the issue of violence against women but also excluded any inputs either from victims of marital cruelty or from those working in the field. Some of its reasoning seems to have been encapsulated in 16.4.4 of the report which says: "A less tolerant and impulsive woman may lodge an FIR even on a trivial act. The result is that the husband and his family may be immediately arrested and there may be a suspension or loss of job. The offence alleged being non-bailable, innocent persons languish in custody. There may be a claim for maintenance adding fuel to fire, especially if the husband cannot pay. Now the woman may change her mind and get into the mood to forget and forgive. The husband may also realize the mistakes committed and come forward to turn over a new leaf for a loving and cordial relationship. The woman may like to seek reconciliation. But this may not be possible due to the legal obstacles. Even if she wishes to make amends by withdrawing the complaint, she cannot do so as the offence is non-compoundable. The doors for returning to family life stand closed. She is thus left at the mercy of her natal family."
But the other side of the story is that there is abuse of the law although the extent to which such abuse takes place has never been firmly established. There are of course unscrupulous women who use section 498A of the IPC for their own ends but what one also has to realise is that very often woman are encouraged by lawyers and/or the police etc. to add that the violence they faced was related to dowry so that their complaints would be taken 'seriously'. And that is what is ironical because the section itself is not designed exclusively in reference to dowry-related problems : in itself, it is meant to deal with all forms of domestic violence.
Section 498A is, in a way, in favour of women. It was created by an amendment to the Indian Penal Code in 1983. Complaints under it are cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable. Close on its heels came two amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 -- in 1984 and 1986 -- which made dowry giving and taking cognizable offences. Those accused under both these laws are not assumed to be innocent until proven guilty ; contrary to other laws, the accused are, in theory, required to prove that theory have not committed a crime although in reality they often easily get bail.
Tilting the balance in favour of women has often been useful since previously women could not meet the burden of proof quite simply because marital violence usually occurred behind closed doors and that being the case, in the absence of independent witnesses, there was no easy way for women to prove their cases beyond reasonable doubt as was required under criminal law.
The problem, however has been that there was no mechanism brought into play to ensure that women didn't lie. The law against perjury is virtually non-functional in India and there are no deterrents to ensure that complaints made under this section to ensure that only genuine cases are registered.
In December 2003, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, I. D. Swami said, "There is no information available with the Government to come to the conclusion that many families in India are suffering due to exaggerated allegations of harassment and dowry cases made by women against their husbands and other family members involving them in criminal misappropriation and cruelty."
The statement is probably not entirely true although cases of abuse of section 498A may simply be isolated ones and not part of a general trend. The answer though probably doesn't lie in making the law bailable and compoundable but in amending it so that bonafide and malafide complaints can be separated.

References:

1. Statement referred to in reply to Rajya Sabha starred question no. 230 for 17.12.2003 regarding amendments in sections 406 and 498A of the IPC http://164.100.24.219/annex/200/AS230.htm

2. Laws against domestic violence : Underused or Abused? by Madhu Kishwar http://www.indiatogether.org/manushi/issue120/domestic.htm

3. Misuse of 498A - much ado about nothing? by Bikram Jeet Batra http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/mar/law-sect498a.htm