We fail to understand what the National Commission for Women does, apart from issuing statements that border on the ridiculous. Take what chairperson Mamta Sharma said a day ago — that women should be comfortable and careful about how they dress.

This came in the wake of the shocking incident in Guwahati, where a teenager was molested by a mob in public. Repeating what a number of so-called moral policemen have been saying for a while now, Sharma pointed out that ‘aping the West blindly’ was ‘eroding our culture and causing such crimes to happen.’ A couple of months ago, Sharma had sparked a row after saying the word ‘sexy’ should not be taken in a negative context. Her bizarre explanation was that ‘sexy’ meant beautiful and charming. She also exhorted the rest of us to not see it in ‘a negative sense.’