By Sharanya Gopinathan

Bangalore city cops have taken a leaf out of a really weird school’s book with their new plans for New Year’s Eve: gender segregation!

After the disastrous and disgusting debacle that was NYE last year, where it was reported that NYE revelry on Bangalore’s popular Brigade Road turned criminal when drunk men began molesting women en masse despite the visible presence of police, it’s clear that the Bangalore city police feel the need to do something visible and tangible to ensure women’s safety this year.

So they’ve gone with gender segregated barricades. If early reports are to be believed, the police will segregate the street on NYE, with 70 percent being allocated to men, and 30 percent to women. Police have even confirmed to The News Minute that “women can accompany men into the male area if their partners are confident about ensuring their security”.

Convenient! So basically, they’re aiming to correct last year total failure of state machinery to ensure women’s safety by telling women they can’t access 70 percent of the street this year. They’re even off-loading their own responsibility to keep women safe onto their male friends, whom women need to totally entrust their safety to, and basically obtain permission from, if they want to move freely through the street.

It’s just the most bizarre and counter-intuitive solution to mass molestation you could think of, and of course brings to mind facetious retorts like that a better solution would be to imprison men in ten percent of the street and require them to get a certificate of approval signed by ten women friends if they want to come within 100 yards of Brigade Road. Or something.

Meanwhile, in other, hopefully more successful, attempts at living down the mortifications and horrors of last year, Mariah Carey is set to return to the iconic New Year’s Rockin’ Eve performance at Times Square after her infamous, super-embarrassing performance there last year, where she spent most of her time on stage walking around not singing, and informing the audience that she couldn’t hear anything. By the way, Tarana Burke, the activist who originally coined the term MeToo, will be the one who drops the ball at Times Square this year 🙂