Crimes against Women and the Media : Analysis and Alternatives Abstract Biswajit Mohapatra Dept of Political Science North-Eastern Hill Univ, Shillong Interestingly in the National Crime Records Bureau's 2012 report, titled Crime in India it was mentioned that Kerala, though well known being the most literate state in the country, also had recorded the highest rate of crimes under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in terms of total cognisable crimes in the country, whereas Nagaland, which as yet has not achieved so much literacy, has the lowest crime rate, about a tenth of what is recorded in Kerala. It's true that there has been a spurt in the number of crime incidents across the country including these two extreme states yet these two states ,i.e, Kerala and Nagaland are not only different in terms of the socio economic background of their population, geographical location ,status of women and the respect that women enjoy within the society and of course TV watching, yet in both the states, it is of great concern that rape is the fastest growing crime as more women are now complaining of such incidents. On March 19, 2015,the Union Women and Child Development Minister, Maneka Gandhi, informed Rajya Sabha in a written reply, citing National Crime Records Bureau data, that atrocities against women have registered an increasing trend over the years with more than three lakh such cases being reported in 2013 alone, This fact not only admits the existing sad state of affairs in relation to nature of crimes and the failure of the criminal justice system of our country from restraining the offenders from committing such gory acts. While pondering over such rise, it is also being claimed that the accessibility of people to watch television flooded with numerous channels through DTH and other kinds of new media including the CDs etc, can be held to be the single most important cause for this rising trend of violence against women. In case of Kerala while the number of households can be many times more than that of Nagaland, a hilly state, yet the increased incidents of rape is a matter of great concern to analysts,policymakers,police and other state agencies etc. In view of such rising incidents of crimes against women in general, and rapes in particular, it is of great significance that we analyse if media is only responsible for the growing trend and consequently lowering of respect for women in these extreme scenarios and also if our society needs to adopt other stronger means of communication with people so as to bring down these crimes if not eliminate together at one go and to inculcate respect for the women in general. In my paper I propose to analyse these two case studies in order to understand the causes besides formulating some viable alternative means for building up awareness and prevention of crimes against women in general and in case of these two states, in particular.