印度不應由於強姦案封殺Uber

It’s pretty frustrating to follow the press coverage of Uber rape case in India on both sides of the world. What is a terrible tragedy — the details are awful and stomach churning — has played out in the press along three very predictable directions.

在一位使用Uber打車服務的印度司機強姦女乘客之後，東西方世界的媒體報道讀起來都令人沮喪。多慘的一樁悲劇啊，案件的細節令人不忍卒讀。媒體的解讀也基本上是沿着三個非常容易預期的導向來進行的。

Meme #1 — Uber is a company that likes to play loose with the rules and this is yet another example (mostly tech press in the U.S.)

導向1：Uber是一家喜歡把規則當遊戲的公司，這樁悲劇只是又一個例子（大多數美國的科技媒體）。

Meme #2 — India is a country which has a problem with women’s safety (both press here and in India)

導向2：印度是一個存在女性安全問題的國家（大多數美國和印度媒體）。

Meme #3 — This is another example of why “foreign” companies can’t be trusted in India (from Delhi government, various Indian influencers)

導向3：這個例子再次說明爲什麼“外國”公司在印度得不到信任（新德里政府、在印度有影響力的人士）。

All of these are loose caricatures playing to existing biases and it’s frustrating because it ignores the underlying realities of these parts of the world and what could have been done to prevent this.

所有這些觀點都是在迎合已有的偏見，是非常不嚴謹的漫畫手法。由於它忽略了這些地區的一些基本事實，和人們本可以採取哪些手段來預防這種悲劇，這真的令人非常沮喪。

First, some history. India has had a string of similar tragic incidents for many years. When I was at Microsoft Hyderabad in 2005, we started having security guards accompany women home late at night after a string of incidents where women in tech companies were assaulted by their shuttle drivers. As I was writing this post, I found more incidents as recent as 2013. This has been happening for a long time now and India has been grappling with some hard social/cultural questions on why it has been unable to stop this. This is why a lot of us tell women traveling to India to be much more aware of their surroundings — the social calculus you employ when you do something as trivial as jumping into a cab or asking a stranger for a favor isn’t the same in every part of the world.

首先要普及一些歷史知識。多年來，印度已經發生了一連串類似的悲劇事件。2005年,我還在微軟海德拉巴分公司(Microsoft Hyderabad)工作，由於當時接連發生科技公司女性員工被通勤班車司機性侵的事件，我們開始派保安護送下班晚的女性員工回家。就在我寫這篇文章的時候，我發現就在不久前的2013年，也發生了很多類似事件。在印度，這類事件早已有之，印度爲什麼不能制止類似悲劇的發生，也與一些深刻的社會和文化問題有關。這就是爲什麼我們許多人都會警告去印度旅行的婦女一定要注意周圍安全。坐進出租車或請陌生人幫忙這樣的小事，可能會導致跟世界其他地方不一樣的後果。

The idea of Uber doing background checks and “filtering out” this driver with an arrest record is laughable for anyone who has dealt with government records in India. First, there is no reliable way to run a check on someone in most parts of the world and second, even if they did, a small bribe in the right place will fix most records.

只要你曾經跟印度政府部門打過交道，你就會知道，質疑Uber爲什麼沒有做好背景調查，從而“過濾掉”這樣一個有犯罪前科的司機，是一個多麼可笑的想法。首先，在全球大多數地區，並沒有可靠的方法徹查某人的歷史記錄。其次，即便他們有這種方法，一筆小小的賄賂就能把大多數記錄改過來。

A side anecdote on how such records work. Most of my school friends didn’t have to go to the Indian equivalent of the DMV to get a license when they hit the right age — they just got a “friend” to get it for them for around $10. I remember being grumpy with my dad when he made me actually take the test. Not because my dad had some moral high ground but more because he didn’t want to spend the money on a bribe (note — that’s my dad in a nutshell for you). India is trying to fix this and anti-corruption has really captured the public’s imagination in the last few years but it’s a long road. Paying off a government official is still very much the status quo (as I find out every time I need something from them).

說一個關於這些記錄的故事。我的大多數同學在到了合法駕車年齡之後，並不會去印度的機動車輛管理部門申領駕照——他們會去找一個“熟人”花大約10美元弄一張。我記得當年我父親逼我參加考試的時候，我甚至還發了脾氣。我父親倒不是有多高的道德水平，只不過他不願意花賄賂的錢。印度政府也試圖改變這種風氣，近幾年印度的反腐行動也引發了公衆的不少想象，但這個國家仍然有很長的路要走。花錢賄賂政府官員仍然是一件非常平常的事（每次我去政府機關辦事時都會發現這一點）。

A reasonable person may ask — shouldn’t Uber have covered their bases anyway and asked the police? In a twist that is probably going to embarrass the Delhi cops, it turns out that Uber actually did get a police “character certificate” for the driver. But as I said above, no one really takes this seriously and Uber shouldn’t have either (more on this later).

自然有人會問，Uber難道不應該調查自己的人，並且問問警察嗎？這個問題可能會讓德里警方感到尷尬，事實上Uber還真有一張警方爲那個司機開具的“無犯罪記錄”。但就像我上文說的那樣，沒人真把它當回事，Uber本來也不應該把它當回事。（稍後再進一步談論這個問題）

The Delhi government banning Uber as “unsafe” smells of a knee-jerk PR reaction against a company perceived to be “foreign.” Delhi has thousands of taxi drivers, cab companies and private transport vehicles — no one bothers asking for any sort of real background check for anyone driving these things. I have friends who own cab companies — their “driver check” is asking the driver whether he has a license. And even if everyone suddenly had great checks, let’s not forget that a lot of the recent assault cases in India were first-time offenders. This is just the way business is done in other parts of the world and people generally accept this as the status-quo and guard against it.

德里政府以“不安全”爲由封掉Uber，透出一絲針對“外國”公司近乎本能的公關反應。德里的出租車司機、出租車公司和私人運營車輛成千上萬，幾乎沒有人要求對任何駕駛這些車輛的人做任何嚴肅的背景調查。我有朋友就是開出租車公司的，他們的“駕駛員調查”就是詢問司機有沒有駕照。如果哪家公司真的做了很好的背景調查，我們也不要忘了，印度最近發生的很多性侵案的嫌疑人其實都是初犯者。在世界其他一些地方，生意就是這樣做的，人們也基本上接受了這種現狀，並對此保持警惕。

Uber with its use of technology is way safer than any other cab company or any generic cab driver who hustles you at the airport. I would ask anyone in India or visiting there to trust it (and other startups like OlaCab that use tech to power transport) way more than some cab driver off the street or some company which has three beat-up cars and a phone number in the yellow pages.

憑藉它所用的技術，比起其他任何出租車公司、或者擠在機場拉客搶客的出租車司機，Uber其實要安全得多。對於任何一個在印度居住和旅遊的人，我會請他們相信Uber（以及其它利用科技促進交通的初創公司，比如OlaCab等），而不是街上隨便一個出租車司機，或是那些只有三輛老爺車，而且只在黃頁本上有一個電話的出租車公司。

What really happened here is a tragedy due to India’s inherent social dynamics and problems with sexual assault as well as it’s inability to have a efficient ID system. *That* is why a young woman was harmed and that’s what we should be focusing the spotlight of mainstream attention on.

事實上，這出悲劇之所以會發生，根源是印度固有的社會因素導致的性侵問題，以及印度沒有能夠建立一個高效的身份證系統。這纔是這名年輕女性受害的原因，這也是社會主流應該關注的焦點。

However, there are still several questions we here need to answer.

不過我們還是需要回答幾個問題。

For us in the tech world — How do we scale services that we take for granted when the social/cultural foundations don’t exist in other nations or there are other social dynamics at play? Do we say “Customers need this service even if we can’t guarantee what we can in the first world?” Or do we take a more nuanced approach (and what does that even mean)? I don’t know.

對科技界來說，當有些社會和文化基礎在某些國家不存在，或者這些國家存在其它社會問題時，我們又該怎樣擴展我們認爲是理所當然的服務？我們是說“顧客需要這項服務，即便我們不能保證我們在第一世界國家能做到的事，在這裏也能做到”？還是我們應該採取一種更微妙的方法（這到底意味着什麼）？我不知道。

For Uber — They must be feeling under siege now in a situation where they did more than any Indian cab company (and way, way more in working with law enforcement promptly). Props to them but they could/should have done more. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in India would know that background checks just don’t work and a certificate from the cops is just paperwork. How do you actually protect your riders in these parts of the world by going above and beyond what law enforcement can do? Someone suggested that Uber adopt a “more Indian way” of background checking by asking a few neighbors of each driver — as silly as it sounds, a crazy, unscaleable, localized approach like this might yield way better results.

Uber現在肯定覺得自己身陷重圍，哪怕他們做得比任何一家印度出租車公司都多（也更爲迅速地配合執法部門方面）。這一點值得鼓勵，但是他們本可以，也本應該做得更多。任何在印度待過一段時間的人都知道，背景調查根本不管用，警方開的無犯罪證明不過是浪費紙張。那麼在這個地區，你如何在執法部門的能力範圍之外保護乘客的安全？有些人建議Uber可以採取“更具印度特色”的背景調查方式，比如詢問每個司機的幾個鄰居——雖然這個點子聽起來似乎愚蠢，但像這樣貌似瘋狂、不容易大規模推廣的“土辦法”很可能會帶來更好的結果。

If you can’t actually have effective background checks in less developed parts of the world, how do you tell your riders that before they step into a car? Culturally, how do you react to this by actually looking into doing more than just set up a bunch of meetings with the Delhi home ministry/ police department which establishes a process that looks great on paper? How do you build this concern into your company DNA? It’s way easier to get big numbers to go up (riders, trips, passengers, cities) than protect against the rare, catastrophic incident. I don’t know but I hope Uber uses the same ingenuity it has shown in developing their core service in tackling these questions.

如果你在欠發達國家無法進行有效的背景調查，那麼在乘客踏進出租車之前，你應該告訴他們什麼呢？從文化角度上，除了和新德里的內政及警務部門開一堆會議，建立一套紙上談兵的流程之外，你還得怎樣應對？你如何把這種對安全的關注植入企業的DNA？讓大數字（司機、行程、乘客、城市數量等）漲上去，要比預防這種罕見的災難事故簡單得多。我也不知道這些問題的答案，但是我希望Uber能發揚它在開發核心服務時展現出的智慧，來解決這些棘手的問題。

The real media tragedy here is the burial of the core story. A young woman was viciously assaulted and still managed to show incredible bravery in the seconds (taking a photo, recording the number) and hours afterward. Society failed her.

真正的媒體悲劇在於，他們埋藏了這個故事的核心：儘管慘遭施暴，這位年輕女子依然在隨後的幾秒鐘和幾小時內展現出非凡的勇氣（拍照、記下車牌號）。但是社會令她失望了。（財富中文網）

Sriram Krishnan currently works on mobile monetization products for Facebook, and previously worked on cloud solutions for both Yahoo and Microsoft.

本文作者Sriram Krishnan目前爲Facebook開發移動貨幣化產品，此前他曾爲雅虎和微軟提供雲解決方案。