The Impact of a Centralized Response System on Violence Against Women – Evidence from India’s Dial-100

Abstract

With crimes in India rising exponentially, particularly violence against women, several states have launched a centralized emergency response system, between 2013 and 2018, to reduce the time taken by law enforcement to respond to calls for service. Exploiting this staggered timing, I use a generalized difference-in-difference approach to estimate its impact on crimes against women in states and districts of India. Results indicate that overall, there is a significant negative impact – about 25% – on overall violence against women in the treated states. Specifically, domestic violence and sexual assault have decreased by 49% and 38%, respectively. This has also improved a secondary outcome – indictment for cases of gender-based violence. Consequently, suicides related to dowry or sexual abuse have also registered a decline. In contrast, there appears to be no such impact on non-gender violence, crimes against men or property crimes.

Keywords: crime rate, crime against women, state policy, Dial-100, centralized response system, crime in India

JEL Classification: J12, K14, K40, K42, O53