Gender-based Violence in India in Covid-19 Lockdown.

Indian Government and policymakers remain more occupied by the Covid-19 lockdown's impact on financial crisis and the economy than on social issues such as gender-based violence (GBV) especially against women. From academic and nonacademic studies, we can fairly observe that the current pandemic has rightly grasped gender-based measurements in terms of justice and mitigation of the problem at every stage of the Covid-19, mainly during the lockdown periods. Women are already carrying out a significant proportion of the household work burden during the lockdown, escalating tensions related to the crunch in resource and space, are creating gender-based violence behind closed doors. Many of the vulnerable women, mostly employed in informal economic sectors and with negligible technological capital under lockdown, are denied entrance to the usual forms of mental and physical refuge as supplied by relatives, friends, and health-care system. The danger of gender-based violence for these women remain inside their own family set-ups. The article will examine how Covid-19 lockdown aggravated gender-based violence (GBV) in general (Sen, N., Singh Roy, A., Bagchi, S. S., 2020). It will also try to examine the policies to solve the intense problem based on previous academic and non-academic studies and reports. The pandemic has brought a catastrophic effect on higher education (HE) in India as the students are now facing marginalization, deteriorating mental health conditions and uncertain future. The schools, colleges and universities are closed for more than six months. The abrupt closure of colleges and universities and the concomitant shift towards online teaching is creating further digital divides and marginalization. Several female students are facing the maximum brunt of the pandemic as their confinement within households in addition to their family's deteriorating financial conditions are creating increasing pressures on them to leave HE to get married or take up jobs. Their plights are further compounded by increased pressure to do household chores and subjection to domestic abuses. A systematic review of literature on the impact of Covid-19 on gender-based violence within the Indian context will be undertaken. Keywords will be defined based on a specific inclusion criterion, which will be used to generate relevant qualitative and quantitative studies. Following further screening of studies to verify suitability, appropriate data on gender-based violence induced by the Covid-19 situation will be extracted. A narrative synthesis or meta-analysis will be applied to systematically combine the data from several studies to enable a robust evidence-based analysis. Summary of results and visualisations will also be carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]