When Rohini was nine years old, she would be heartbroken at how her father struggled with red tape while accessing government benefits for farmers. Troubled by his state she once asked him who was the authority responsible for ensuring he received his due, when he answered, ‘the district collector.
From that moment on, a young Rohini knew, who she had to become. 23 years later, the only way is still forward, with no looking back.
Having completed her education from a government school and engineering from a government college, this young IAS officer cleared her civil service examinations without any private coaching!
It was as a student in a government institute she realised that despite having good teachers, the only thing the institutions lacked was infrastructure. And this became something she aims to fix in Salem.
Her will to provide equal access to education for all reflected in her actions during one of her visits to the villages in Salem. While monitoring the development activities, she insisted on a surprise visit to a government elementary school near Attur.
Entering the Karutharajapalayam village school, she was surprised to see children playing on the playground during their lectures. When asked about why they weren’t in their classrooms, she was notified that they had been waiting for their teachers to come, most of whom were protesting with the Joint Action Committee of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Organisations -Government Employees’ Organisations (JACTTO-GEO).
She wasted no time in getting the students back to class and started teaching them. For students of Class 1, 2 and 3, she taught Tamil and English.
She asked them to never give up on their dreams and aim to reach higher. It was only a matter of time, till she directed the education department officials to arrange teachers for these students.
Her earlier stints include being the Additional Collector (Development) and Project Officer for the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) for Madurai district.
The two men who have stood by Rohini in all her endeavours are her father, Ramadas Panduranga Bhajibhakare and her husband, also Madurai Superintendent of Police, IPS Vijyendra Bidari.
Speaking to The Hindu, he proudly beamed saying, “She is a very positive and sensitive person who believes in making women employees confident.”
Despite both of them holding extremely important public posts, when at home, they support each other in household responsibilities.
“The best thing about my husband is he is extremely supportive and non-fussy about so many things at home. I am not a great cook, but that is never an issue. He never bothers if I am late from work. When I travel, he takes care of our son,” she told the publication.
During the course of her administration, execution of plans wasn’t the only challenge. She worked on her spoken language skills to learn the Madurai dialect to avoid any linguistic barriers.
Rohini believes her appointment will serve the purpose of women empowerment. “It is important that women are made part of the decision making the process at the highest levels,” she told the News Minute.
When Avani Chaturvedi, Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh were commissioned as flying officers in the Indian Air Force, they created history as the first batch of women fighter pilots inducted in the country, a stream that was male-dominated since the dawn of Indian defence aviation.
Once again, they’re all set to have their names etched in the history books, for they will soon begin flying frontline fighter planes in next three weeks.
Presently, the women stalwarts are undergoing rigorous training before undertaking the responsibility of the combat jets.
“You will be glad to know that their performance has been on par with other pilots despite the strenuous and demanding nature of flying,” Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa proudly mentioned during a press conference.
According to a senior IAF official, who is part of the training team, the young women pilots would begin their combat jet flying operations from next month onwards, reports NDTV. At the moment, they are flying Hawk advanced jet trainer aircrafts.
The IAF chief also stated that the next batch of women trainee pilots for the fighter stream that was shortlisted in July is already undergoing stage-2 fighter pilot training. “On successful completion of the training, the three women fighter pilots will be commissioned into the fighter stream in December this year,” Dhanoa added.
With government motioning the induction of women in fighter stream last year, scores of girls and young women in the country can now work towards achieving their dream of becoming fighter pilots and as IAF motto goes, touch the sky with glory.
Every day the medics quietly enter villages around Kadiri town in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and do their rounds.
They stop at village squares to say the occasional hello, before slipping into cramped two-room homes and closing the door behind them.
Behind these closed doors are their “priority patients” – mostly women who have been trafficked for sex and are now battling stigma to stay on course with their HIV/AIDS treatment.
For the medical teams from the Hospital of Infectious Diseases in Bathalapalli, the trips into the rural hinterland are the only way to check the pulse of their patients, many of whom are reluctant to talk about their health, refuse to go the hospitals and often stop treatment midway.
“There is no choice, we have to extend our vigil beyond the walls of the hospital,” said Dr Gerardo Álvarez-Uría, the hospital’s director.
“We have created a network of health workers to ensure that nobody is left out of the ambit of diagnosis and treatment. With so many women trafficked from here and the migrant population, there is an increasing case load.”
Thousands of women are trafficked from in and around Kadiri town in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district to the brothels of Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune every year.
Agents and gangs prey on the poverty of thousands of women and girls in rural areas, promising them good jobs and decent wages in cities – but then selling them into the sex trade, activists say.
A 2016 survey by district officials in Anantapur – a densely populated district on the highway linking India’s technology hubs of Bengaluru and Hyderabad – identified 6,200 women as “susceptible to trafficking” due to poverty, a lack of awareness about the risks, and drought in agriculture-dependent areas.
Many women are rescued or escape – only to return home and face a new struggle to overcome their past. As well as social stigma, among their biggest challenges is HIV/AIDS, contracted as sex workers.
The international symbol for HIV
RISK FACTOR
There are an estimated 2.1 million people living with HIV in India according to the National Aids Control Programme, with the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana having the highest numbers.
The clandestine status of trafficking victims makes them invisible and limits their access to health services, particularly those that focus on HIV/AIDS, campaigners say.
According to government data, Anantapur district has more than 25,000 HIV positive cases – out of a population of 4 million.
Campaigners say many more HIV cases are unrecorded due to frequent migration and social stigma.
In the last five years, 7,864 new HIV positive cases have been registered. Of these, more than half are women.
“Besides a high incidence of HIV due to trafficking and migration, there is also a high treatment default rate in the area,” Anantapur district medical officer K Venkataramana told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Group meetings and community awareness programmes don’t work here so well, only a more personalised approach does.”
Periodic health checks aim to ensure patients follow daily antiretrovirals treatment but nearly 16 percent of identified patients default on treatment, data shows.
“They just give wrong home addresses which makes it practically impossible to track them for follow-up checks,” he said.
Sex work is viewed as “morally corrupt” and women forced into prostitution will go to great lengths to hide their past.
“They fear that if they test positive, the community will get to know and they will be ostracised,” said Shakuntala Byalla, a counsellor in Kadiri.
“And in many cases they are so poor that they cannot even afford the bus fare to get to the hospital for check-ups.”
TREATING STIGMA
The Hospital of Infectious Diseases on the Bathalapalli-Kadiri road is easy to miss.
But it is its discreet location – away from the bustle of the Kadiri town and its big bus terminal – that ensures the steady flow of patients.
Run by non-profit Rural Development Trust, the 82-bed unit gets up to half of its patients from neighbouring districts, making it one of the key health service providers in the region, besides the government-run hospital in Anantapur.
“While the government provides the Trust hospital with free medicines, testing kits and frequent training, they also have an outreach that ensures patients get treated,” said Anil Kumar, head of the government-run AIDS programme in the district.
The outreach programme has ensured that patients from this “trafficking hot spot” don’t discontinue treatment.
The airy outpatient department of the hospital sees an average 300 people walk in for a consultation on any given day.
For many, it was their first visit and a first acknowledgement of the fact that they are sick.
“We are aware that the journey for our patients from their village homes to the hospital is difficult,” said Álvarez-Uría, who has spent eight years at the hospital.
“Once they come, we want to make sure they stay on course with the treatment. So we are discreet, very discreet.”
For the 642 new patients who were started on the anti-retroviral treatment last year, it is the “non-judgmental approach” that has worked.
Teams of health workers, nurses, volunteers and sometimes doctors make sure that the treatment that is started at the hospital continues in the village.
“Counselling, health checks, providing nutritious diet – they all go hand-in-hand,” Álvarez-Uría said.
“To get to that point, our outreach teams start with a conversation that tells the patients they matter. The rest follows.”
The article first appeared in the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking and climate change.
Today, the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl Child celebrates and recognises the rights of girls and the challenges that they face worldwide.
This story highlights the experience of a Lucknow girl, Kalyani, who simply wanted to dance.
Gender norms are a major theme of Project Kissa Kahani, a narrative-based research project conducted in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.
A strong example of such norms in action is Kalyani’s brother, who forbade her from participating, after learning that Kalyani had entered a dance contest. His actions undermine the recent changes towards gender norms in the country. Children are often brought up with strong views on gender and the differences between men and women.
The times, however, are changing.
Kalyani’s father challenged conventional wisdom and became the strongest advocate for his daughter’s dreams. He does not endorse the desire to shield her from the outside world. Rather than limit her aspirations, Kalyani’s father gave her his blessing and his whole-hearted support, allowing her to dance.
Thus, she gained the confidence to spread her wings and soar.
“I have stopped regretting being born a girl,” says Kalyani.
With the support of her father, the world has opened up for Kalyani. She is no longer plagued with self-doubt and the perceived limitations of being a girl.
This story is a good example of the role of fathers to foster spaces of hope and healing for the young women and girls in their lives. Fathers can set meaningful examples for their sons to facilitate the voice, power, and agency to support girls in whatever ways they may need, when they may need.
The real hero of this story, however, is Kalyani as she dares to be a brilliant girl in a world that is sometimes overprotective and binding.
Shobha Desai is a woman of all trades. She is a police officer, an athlete and a mother of a 12-year-old. It is, however, her love for athletics and its active pursuit that makes her stand out as a wonder woman.
Hailing from the tiny village of Oglewadi in Karad, Shobha is part of the police force under Kalyan Division in Thane. Introduced into the world of athletics by her sports-fanatic father Shamrao Shivram at a very young age, she built her aptitude through relentless running practices on hills and roads in her village.
Starting from her school days, Shobha has won more than 85 championships till now, that range from the district level to national and international levels.
She also has many records in 21 km and 42 km marathons to her credit.
It was late A C P Ashok Kamte, a martyr of the 2008 Mumbai siege, who had motivated Shobha to join the police force in 1995, after having witnessed the running skills of the prolific sportswoman.
However, a break in her sporting career came in the form of her pregnancy in 2003, following which she had to discontinue athletics after being advised by doctors.
“I felt a lot like running and practising. I knew I was growing lazy and gaining weight. So, after a long wait of 5 years, I started again,” Shobha told The Indian Express.
Once she resumed her duties, she found extended support from seniors officials in the department in pursuing her passion.
“The department adjusted job timings so that I had enough time to practice. My seniors let me practice first and then go for duty,” she added.
In fact, when Shobha was backing out of Singapore Masters Athletics Championship last year due to lack of funds, help came in the form of Thane C P Param Bir Singh, who had funded all of her expenses.
And for the 20th Asia Masters Athletic Championship in China, DCP Dr Sanjay Shinde and KDMC Mayor Rajendra Deolekar supported her with financial aid.
The woman remains unstoppable. One of her lifelong goals was to win the Standard Chartered half marathon (21.09 km), which she aced with ease in January this year. Now, she has a new target to clinch—to break her own record!
Champa’s young daughter was suffering from fever and care received from the local practitioner did not help. There was no option but to visit the nearest hospital in the block even if it meant foregoing the day’s work and wages. Champa incurred expenses for travel, consultation and medicines totalling to Rs 450 to seek necessary treatment for her daughter.
This experience led to Champa bringing up the lack of healthcare in her village for discussion in the women’s collective meeting. After a prolonged and heated debate on the matter, Leelawati, the leader of the collective admitted, “People in cities have family doctors. If we fall sick here in villages, what can we do? We should also have a doctor for ourselves.”
The women reached a consensus in the same meeting to start a Gaon Dawakhana (village clinic).
With “Our health is in our hands” as the motto, the clinic was started in Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh in January 2017. Gaon Dawakhana has been designed as a subscription-based model, owned and managed by the community with the help of visiting doctors.
Need for a village clinic
Primary health care is the villagers’ first point of contact with the healthcare system.
The government has designed a three-tier public health system, the first one being health sub-centres (HSC). These centres, manned by a trained nurse, are meant to cater to a population of 5,000. However, in densely populated geographies such as Uttar Pradesh, HSCs often serve 8,000 to 10,000 people.
Consulting a doctor through a primary health centre (PHC), which exist for every 30,000 people, villagers have to travel to seek a consultation. Further, challenges related to infrastructure and competent paramedical personnel at facilities still exist.
In such a scenario rural people have no choice but to seek care from quacks who provide services at doorsteps. What if a qualified physician is made available to serve in every village? Will it be sustainable? Gaon Dawakhana is an attempt to answer these concerns.
Community-owned self-sustaining clinics
Consultation and medicines are free at the bi-weekly clinic that attracts patients from villages in a 3km radius. (Photo by Lokpriya Janhit Sewa Sansthan)
Each household pays Rs 50 per month to avail healthcare services at the clinic. The beneficiaries’ health cards are updated as soon as the monthly contribution is collected from them. Patients receive free consultation and medicines while visiting the clinic. The subscription amount was fixed at Rs 50, assuming average family size as five.
Though healthcare services are offered now at the same subscription even if the family size is more, an additional amount of Rs 10 per head may be collected in future.
So far, 1,665 families have registered and have paid a total subscription of Rs 1.94 lakh.
Those without subscriptions are also treated now but are encouraged to subscribe.
Clinics are held at the Lalganj block on Thursdays and Sundays. Village clinics are held in the panchayat office premises on two days fixed by the women’s collective leaders.
Expenses towards doctors’ fee and medicine are met from the subscription amount.
Health camps
In addition to the clinics, quarterly health camps are organised. These were initiated to help non-subscribers seek consultation and also to encourage more households to subscribe to the dawakhana scheme.
Of the 227 patients above 40 years of age screened for risk factors for diabetes and hypertension, 41 were suspected to be facing the conditions. A trained health worker from the community and on the rolls of Gaon Dawakhana, will actively track these 41 patients.
At these health camps, government doctors and paramedical staff, offer free services. Medicines available with the public health system are issued free of cost.
Role of the women’s collective
Nari Sangh, the women’s collective was started in 2008 with the objective of empowering rural women, through the joint efforts of Lokpriya Janhit Sewa Sansthan (LJSS), a local community-based organisation (CBO), Tata Trusts and People’s Action for National Integration (PANI). The women learnt to access food security service entitlements under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and food grains under the Public Distribution System (PDS).
With a Nari Sangh at every village and leaders identified at each level – from panchayat to state – the collective serves as a pressure group to mobilise and improve grassroots processes. Over a period of time, the women realised that food security did not necessarily translate to better health; mainly due to lack of healthcare services. Hence Gaon Dawakhana was a need.
“The women informed us that they spent up to 30% of their income on healthcare annually. So we applied our insight and encouraged them to start the clinic through collective contributions,” Shashi Bhooshan of PANI told VillageSquare.in.
Women leaders shared that the villagers’ faith in the Nari Sangh helped them start Gaon Dawakhana. They arranged for homoeopathy doctors, considering the feasibility and the awareness among villagers about alternative treatments. The very first clinic attracted more than 50 patients.
As a norm, the amount collected as the subscription is held by the Nari Sangh leaders in a joint account with the CBO representative to ensure transparency. According to Niranjan Tiwari of LJSS, the women follow guidelines set by PANI to ensure transparency in all their work.
Lessons and challenges
Women of Nari Sangh, the collective, hold discussions with representatives of a community-based organization about the village clinic. (Photo by Lokpriya Janhit Sewa Sansthan)
Gaon Dawakhana demystifies the common notion that rural poor are always in need of free services. Poor and vulnerable families are willing to pay for services especially when they perceive value in it.
Despite voluminous efforts, the entire healthcare system is facing several challenges to address key attributes like availability, accessibility, acceptability, appropriateness and affordability.
In densely populated villages, clinic days are crowded and it is a challenge for the doctors to see every patient. Conducting health camps with designated manpower and available budget also pose a challenge. To bring down cost, health camp services can be clubbed with routine village health and nutrition days. Hence, constant engagement with grassroots health system staff – nurse, anganwadi worker and ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers will be a good option.
The experiment is a work in progress and its future will largely depend on the success of the health camps and sustained the interest of the community in regularly contributing to it. Gaon Dawakhana certainly holds the promise of happier Champas who shall be spared from disproportionate expenses to seek basic health care services.
Sandeep Chavan is a homoeopathic doctor, trained in public health administration from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He works in Tata Trusts as a program officer for health initiatives in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Views are personal.
Adapted from an article originally published on VillageSquare.in. Subscribe to VillageSquare’s weekly update on the website for more stories from rural India.
Known as the ‘Dauntless Bullet Woman of Kerala’, Shyni Rajkumar is a trailblazer for modern day women in ways more than one.
A teacher, an ex-policewoman, an athlete and a former state cricket player, this 35-year-old biker is a rider with a passionate cause.
She covered over 12,000 km from Kanyakumari to Ladakh in 42 days to raise awareness about violence against women. This solo-trip made Shyni one of the first women from Kerala to have embarked upon such a journey.
Shyni also founded Kerala’s first all-women Royal Enfield Bullet club called the ‘Dauntless Royal Explorers’ club, where she encourages women to drop all their inhibitions and teaches them to ride the Bullet and chase adventure.
Born in Thiruvananthapuram, Shyni was an athlete right from school and played at the state-level as part of the Kerala women’s cricket team.
As a young girl, Shyni would often look on awestruck as her uncle, a policeman by profession, rode his Royal Enfield Bullet patrolling the area around her Trivandrum home.
“In the back of my head I was nurturing a dream but coming from a simple middle-class family, I knew doing something different like mounting on a giant vehicle and trotting through my hometown, would invite the sly and nasty comments from people around me,” says Shyni.
Little did she know, she would break into a male bastion and become the first woman in the whole of Kerala to buy the Himalayan edition of the Royal Enfield.
As a young athlete and cricketer, Shyni would often travel or tournaments and athletic meets, and it is this passion for travel that rekindled her love for biking.
One would find it amusing and shocking at the same time that this Bullet Queen hadn’t touched a two-wheeler until college.
In fact, she first learned to ride a bicycle when she travelled to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh after completing her pre-degree from All Saints college in Trivandrum.
Given her athletic background, she took up the job of imparting physical education at a school her cousin sister taught at, in Gorakhpur. She would see children cycling long distances to reach school every day. So she decided to learn it too. Once she mastered the art, Shyni was the only teacher who would cycle to the homes of her students and meet their families in faraway villages.
She was finally in a place, where women riding bikes were not frowned upon or called ‘arrogant’ or ‘manly’ like in her hometown. It was then that she transitioned from riding cycles to travelling on two-wheelers like TVS Victor and Bajaj Pulsar and finally riding an old Royal Enfield Bullet.
Shyni’s childhood dreams were slowly coming true. She was recruited to the Delhi police in 2003 but quit the job in a few months to return to Kerala.
The neighbourhood in Kerala Shyni belonged to made her abandon her passion for biking for a while. People would ridicule and mock her for trying to prove she was a woman too bold for her times, who rode bikes and returned home when she pleased, basically trying to rub shoulders with men.
Photo Credit: OJ Studio
Years later, when asked about the how the perspective of these people has changed, Shyni simply laughs saying, “The same people who ridiculed me, now ride pillion on my bike.”
Her father owned a Hero Honda back in the day, but she found it difficult to gather the courage to ride it. It was at the time, her cousin brother Jayaprakash spoke to her and encouraged her to let go of her inhibitions.
He told her, “Shyni, your eyes sparkle with a passion when you mount that bike. Stop conforming to the whims of the world. You love riding, so go ride that bike. ”
From the old Hero Honda to a Pulsar, a Passion and finally a standard Bullet (that she owned with her brother Reni), there was no looking back for this woman biker.
“I had always been a very straightforward person who when ridiculed or rebuked in public would fight back. But my anna told me, ‘If they talk, let them. Listen from one ear and let the things that bring you down go out from the other ear.’ So, I ignored the stares and let the nasty comments fall on deaf ears.”
She attributes her success as a rider to her parents, especially the men in her life including her husband, brothers and relatives.
Starting Kerala’s first all-women bikers club, ‘Dauntless Royal Explorers’ was a major challenge for Shyni.
Dauntless Explorers of Kerala. Photo Credit: OJ Studio
“When girls would walk up to me appreciating my biking adventures, they would ask me to teach them. I wasn’t confident enough to take up the role of a teacher. But my husband told me, to not shy away from teaching and helping any girl who came to me for help.”
This club changed the mindsets of people at large that women were capable of chasing their adventure and helped women who thought they couldn’t ride bullets, which they certainly could. All they had to do was dare.
Today, over 30 women are part of the bikers club, and the number is only growing.
It was one of one such trip that Shyni rode her Royal Enfield Himalayan to the home of deceased Soumya, who was subjected to brutal rape and mutilation after being thrown off a passenger train from Ernakulam to Shornur on February 1, 2011.
The story of Soumya and rising rape cases across the country rattled her to the extent that it became the turning point of her life. She decided to come back home with one agenda on her mind ‘to embolden the girls and women of Kerala and India.’
She decided to embark on the 50-day 12,000 km trip from Kanyakumari to Ladakh called ‘Azaadi’ to raise awareness on women empowerment and stop violence against women.
The ride was flagged off from Manaveeyam Veedhi, a cultural corridor in Thiruvananthapuram on July 16 and Shiny completed the trip in less than 42 days.
“In my way, I decided to motivate women across India to not bear discrimination, instead, step up, come out of their shells and raise their voice,” she says.
She began the journey with two or her biker friends, Nash from Kannur and Anup from Kozhikode, both of whom parted ways at Leh. She halted at various places, with placards, slogans and speeches to get her message across to as many people and also portray Hindu-Christian-Muslim solidarity.
This 12,000 km ride was not all smiles. She remembers the very first day, she met with a minor accident, near the Kerala border, travelling from Madurai to Tirunelveli.
“I was emotional when I left home because this was going to be a long trip away from home. Tears were brimming in my eyes when the bullet skid after hitting a stone. I fell, and the oil from my bullet started leaking. I cried thinking the very first day was going to be the end of my biking career. There was blood oozing from my mouth, and I was unsure if I could move my right hand. But luckily I sustained minor injuries,” she recalls.
The first day on the longest trip of her life and her bike was damaged beyond repair. She knew that she couldn’t spend all her funds repairing the bike, so she got in touch with the Regional Service Manager of Enfield, Bino Job, who made a pact to reach out and help her in case of any difficulty or help. She asked Bino to make minimalistic repairs just to get the bike working.
“Bino was extremely understanding of my ordeal. He sent two of his service boys from their Tirunelveli service centre, almost a 60kms away from my accident spot, who travelled with me across three villages to arrange the transport to get my bullet to the service centre,” she says.
She was in for the biggest surprise of her life when the repair costs came up to over Rs 30000, and Bino Job decided not to charge her a single rupee.
Shyni recalls the incident saying, “It was a rollercoaster of emotions to experience this selfless act of sheer kindness from somebody I hardly knew. I remember Bino telling me, ‘Shyni, the money you will land up spending is the hard earned money you have saved to make the trip possible. I cannot charge you. Go and reach out your message to as many people as you can.’
The only money she spent that day was the cost of an extra day’s stay in Madurai.
Shyni encourages girls and women across India to fight discrimination by not giving up in the face of adversity.
“Don’t wait for someone to rush to your rescue. Be your hero. Buckle up and train yourself both physically and mentally to fight against violence. Don’t let anybody dictate gender roles to you. You are strong, fearless and everything you want to be. Believe in yourself and the world will see, you reaching places, you are destined to be.”
Gabriel Project Mumbai (GPM) is a Jewish volunteer-based NGO that cares for vulnerable children living in the city’s slums. Their work includes tackling malnutrition, inadequate health care and illiteracy.
Founded in 2012, the NGO was named after Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, an Israeli who was brutally murdered in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
Mumbai’s slums, much like other poverty ridden parts of India, have children as young as four years old working as rag pickers and sewage cleaners because of acute poverty.
From the Gabriel Project Mumbai website
GPM tries to provide nutritious meals to children attending classes around the areas. Often, free meals alone are reason enough for parents to send their kids to government schools, and these kids to stick on.
But it’s not just the kids who have benefited from their hard work.
Some of the cooks – From the Gabriel Project Mumbai website
In a kitchen in Kalwa, a suburb on the outskirts of Mumbai, a trio of women from a collective prepare these nutritious meals, as reported by Midday. From various parts of Karnataka and Maharashtra, the women have made Kalwa their home for close to 30 years. Most of them live in one room-kitchen tenements in nearby chawls.
The food will feed 100 underprivileged children who study in class 1 to 4 of Joshua Greenberger Learning Centre, run by non-profit Gabriel Project Mumbai (GPM).
The ladies Ragini Godbole, Subhadra Khose and Sangita Raut, are a part of a catering service Delicio Food Company. It’s through this that they partnered with GPM.
Even the spices that go into the recipe are made in-house leaving the kitchen fragrant.
Given their skill and the authenticity of their food, writer and anthropologist Elana Sztokman, also the wife of founder Jacob Sztokman decided to curate a bunch of their recipes and compile it into a book called Masala Mamas, which will be published this December, and will be available in print and ebook format.
What’s in the book? Masala Mamas: Recipes and Stories from Indian Women Changing their Communities through Food and Love, contains 100 vegetarian recipes, mostly Maharashtrian in origin, shared by 16 women from the collective.
The book also has anecdotes that offer the reader a glimpse into their traditions and everyday lives. For instance, things like how to use turmeric for facial care or coconut oil for hair.
“They’ve also spoken about the experience of being a woman in India; the time they got married, when they stopped going to school, the expectations they have to live up to, and how their daughters are a little more independent than they were,” says Sztokman to Midday.
Sztokman told Midday that the book would help preserve their knowledge and skill, which stands the chance of getting lost in urban migration.
“It’s a win-win model. The children fulfil their nutrition and education requirements, and the women have a chance at economic empowerment,” adds Elana.
Back home in Israel, Elana hosted recipe trials with professionals from the hospitality industry to ensure every recipe in the book works.
The profits from the book sales will go towards supporting the women’s kitchen. Through the partnership with GPM, they currently earn Rs 16,000 per month as a group and are shareholders in Delicio Food Company.
Social media has become a place for women to share shockingly all-to-common experiences of sexual assault/harassment from across the world. The move is a stinging eye-opener about just how widespread the problem.
The global outcry began after a call to action by actress Alyssa Milano, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Thousands of women acknowledged, on social media, that they too were victims. Their rallying cry? Two simple words — “Me too”.
Photo Source
Along with the two words, women have also shared their personal stories, as a way to make others feel less alone.
Amid this world-wide outpouring from women, the question does arise – what about the men? Of course, there is the usual set of misogynist and sexist remarks, but the vast majority have either shared their support or chosen to not react – leaving the space to women.
But is this the only two reactions a man can make? Actually no. There is a third reaction. One which involves direct acknowledgement of the role almost all men have in perpetuating a world where such things are possible.
And just in case men are not sure what exactly that means, here is the perfect example, posted by Gautam Mahajan, a Mumbai-based writer. Have a read of his Facebook post below.
Gautam Mahajan
Here is the text of the post below:I don’t usually get carried away by social media trends, but this time it’s different.
Me too – I laughed and participated in sexist jokes and misogynistic humour, thinking it was just what ‘men’ do. Me too – I was part of a toxic culture where a woman was considered a conquest, an object created for physical gratification. Me too – I threw the word ‘rape’ around casually, without understanding the gravity of what it meant, of what it represented. Me too – I thought that men were in some way superior to women. Me too – I represented everything I despise about masculinity today.
But it was the strong, intelligent, brilliant women I met who showed me how wrong I was – family, friends, flatmates, colleagues and partners. They made me realise how difficult life can be for a woman in this fucked up, patriarchal world that has no basis or logic for considering men better. They showed me the meaning of true strength, of what it takes to survive, even thrive, despite society trying to keep them down at every possible opportunity. And long before the sexual harassment they were subject to came to light, I knew that men have to do better, that women deserve much, much better.
I may not have the power to change this mindset, but I promise that I will not encourage it. That I will not be part of a conversation or social circle that considers women to be second-class citizens. It’s the least I can do. And I know that I’m not alone.
This seems like the perfect response to an increasingly important issue. Do let us know your thoughts below.
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Tucked away in Old Delhi’s decrepit walls and dilapidated homes, is a treasure trove of stories, Fouzia Dastango makes come alive, as she takes her seat in the usual vajrasana on the white mattress, the colour of which matches her traditional attire of salwar kameez.
Her voice and story are the weapons she plays by, no audio-visual support, nor music. A little laughter, a grimace, a sigh, a thundering screech – she uses uncountable modulations to express the complexities of human emotions and transports her audience to the world of stories of imminent Urdu writers like Ashraf Subohi Dehelvi, Ismat Chugtai, Intizar Hussain and others.
From the dastan of Ghummi Kebabi and his kebab shop in the lanes of Old Delhi, to the sensitive feminist writing of Ismat Chugati’s Nanhi ki Nani, this young woman, deemed India’s first female Dastango has not only broken into the male bastion, but is striving every single day to revive the 13th century dying art of oral Urdu storytelling, Dastangoi, in the country.
What is Dastangoi?
An oral Urdu storytelling tradition, it has the the dastango or storyteller whose voice is his main artistic tool at the centre.
While it originated in Persia, the art form travelled to Delhi and other parts of India, with the spread of Islam. It reached its pinnacle during the sepoy mutiny of 1857, when a number of Dastangos migrated to Lucknow, and popularized the art form in the city. Enjoyed by all classes in Oudh, the artform died for a while with the demise of Mir Baqar Ali in 1928, to be only revived in 2005.
The earliest reference in print is a 19th-century text chronicling the adventures of Amir Hamza titled Dastan-e-Amir-Hamza. Indian poet and Urdu critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and his nephew, writer, director Mahmood Farooqui, played significant roles in its revival in the 21st century.
Fouzia’s journey
This Jasola-based dauntless storyteller was born and brought up in a lower-middle class family in Old Delhi, an influence and charm that reflects in her enchanting stories.
Growing up, money was always tight and she remembers how daily finances were discussed in hushed whispers by her humble scooter mechanic father and homemaker mother who struggled to make ends meet.
But that did not deter them from inculcating in a young Fouzia, a love for stories.
While kids her age would throw tantrums asking their parents for toys and chocolates, a young Fouzia was different.
Collecting the little bit of pocket money, her Abbu could afford shelling out, amounting to a few paisas (an old Indian currency), she would march hand-in-hand with him and her brother to the Sunday market. Counting and recounting if it made up the exact amount, she’d spend them on comics and the Urdu children’s monthly magazine of the yore– ‘Khilona.’
She grew up on an appetite of stories.
“I remember listening to folktales and stories from my maternal and paternal grandmothers. Appa Chammo from our neighbourhood would tell us stories while I looked on with absolute awe and delight. Little did I think, I would grow up to narrate stories myself,” says Fouzia.
She completed her schooling from a government Urdu-medium school and moved on to completing her honours in Sociology and Masters in education planning and administration from Jamia Millia Islamia.
Despite being strongly attracted to performing arts, Fouzia was shackled by lack of opportunities.
“Belonging to a government school there weren’t many opportunities, I could showcase my talent. We weren’t taught theatre, drama, singing or dancing. The resources were so minimal that the fact we were studying was a major achievement,” she says.
In Grade 11, Fouzia was exposed to the beauty of theatre for the first time upclose when her teacher Nateef Ma’am, took the entire class to watch her the play, Rustom aur Sohrab, part of the 10th-century Persian epic Shahnameh by Persian poet Ferdowsi.
“I remember being bedazzled and in that moment I dreamt of doing theatre myself. But I was quickly came back to earth from that fantasy. I knew I had to get a job to alleviate the financial burden on my family.”
She started taking tuitions at home right from Class 7 all through college to pay for her own education. As a young student at Jamia, she would attend her morning classes and take tuitions starting evening until 10 pm in the night.
It wasn’t until 2006, that she had her first encounter with the Urdu art form. She kept telling her my friend Prabhat, about how she wanted to do something new and exciting related to performing arts. And he immediately quipped asking, “Have you ever watched Dastangoi?”
She tagged along to a show, where modern dastangos who revived the tradition in India, Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Hussain were performing.
“It was love at first sight, I knew this was the artform I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was at a time when people didn’t even know what Dastangoi was. It is only in the last three years that the dying artform reeling under the pressure of the glamour industry has come into the limelight,” she says.
At a time when the art form seemed so obscure to the rest of the world, here was a woman determined to take it up, when clearly only men dominated the scene.
“I had never seen a woman perform back in the day. But I was not going to step back,” she says.
She took her talim from stalwart Dastango gurus like Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Hussain,the latter who she distanced herself from after the infamous sexual assault case came to the forefront.
She first performed in 2006 at I Discovery I in Gurgaon, with her Ustaad Danish Hussain.
“I was nervous and jittery. Who has the honour of performing their first ever dastangoi with her guru? It went well. I was glad I did not forget.l any of my lines,” she laughs.
Despite having started off my Dastangoi journey, Fouzia continued to work as a full-time lecturer at the State Council of Educational Research and Training in Delhi,a job she later quit in 2014, to pursue Dastangoi full time.
“I would go to work, then attend my rehearsals in the evening and do my riyaz till 11 in the night. My amma could make no head no tell out of what I was doing. But my brother supported me a lot. When I quit my job in 2014, I told myself that I’d rather die hungry than do something that doesn’t allow me to chase my passion or makes me happy.”
While most people think, artists get paid a lot more due to the glamour of their work, Fouzia breaks the bubble saying, “It’s an art form. It won’t get you much money. We find it difficult to make ends meet when tickets don’t go off in off season.”
Apart from Dastangoi, she earns her living by conducting storytelling workshops in schools and colleges. Her source of income has never been Dastangoi in entirety. She also works as a consultant for organisations in the educational and developmental sector.
She describes the challenges of the Dastangoi form of storytelling with other forms saying:
“If you see other story tellers, you’ll see they do everything in their power to attract the attention of the audience, including jumping around the stage, using audio visual aid, sound effects, props and what not. But Dastangoi has only two storytellers clad in the traditional costume who perform. We attract and hold attention of the audience, based solely on our voice and our content seated in regular two to three poses with no other supporting aid. How much can you move seated in vajrasana? Does your voice have the power to resonate and strike the chord of your listeners’ hearts to make sure they don’t leave?”
Having performed over a 100 shows, Fouzia boasts of never having a single listener walk out in the middle of her dastan till date.
Mahmood Farooqui wrote mentioned her as the country’s first female dastango in his book.
She expresses her gratitude for the title saying, “I am happy that it helped pave the way for more women to engage in this dying art form of India. I wish to take this oral tradition, especially small cities where it was existent years back but seems to have lost its glory. Till date, this oral tradition is thriving in smaller neighbourhoods. I want to revive it in as many Indian villages as possible.”
She expresses the need for government and cultural aid for the platform.
“It is a heritage that we are keeping alive and passing down to future generations after all.”
Her mantra for success is doing what you are extremely passionate about and keeping the thirst to achieve more in the field alive. Money and fame, she says will fade with time.
While she has watched several Dastangos come and go. It’s difficult for most of them to sustain their passion in the long run.
“Don’t be seasonal Dastango. Once you decide to step in, you are a dastango for life.”
From mental health to communal harmony to feminism, Fouzia has mastered the art of picking the right stories and performing them for her audience in a way that strikes the right chords.
“I don’t want to be just a woman in a crowd holding a banner demanding change. I want to affect change through the medium of Dastangoi storytelling.”
People might not listen to a lecture but it piques their curiosity when they listen to it in story form, she believes. Stories have that kind of effect on people after all.
Fouzia will soon be performing her upcoming dastan, Dastaan-e-Khusro in November. Needless to say, she is going to win hearts yet again.
If Fouzia inspires you, write to her at fouzia.work@gmail.com
When an 18-year-old Shila Dawre decided to leave her parental home in Parbhani district to go to Pune, all she had was Rs 12 in hand and passion in her eyes to chase her dreams.
No more was she going to be told that her aspirations were worthless and driving was not a profession girls from good households ventured into. Not in the 1980s at least.
And this young woman shut all these stereotypes down when she became India’s first woman auto driver. Rubbing shoulders with khaki-clad men driving rickshaws, clad in her regular salwaar kameez, she drove around the lanes of Pune, owning them.
Recorded in the Limca Book of World Records as the first woman auto-rickshaw driver in the country, Shila Dawre never in her life imagined becoming a trailblazer to women who dreamt of driving auto-rickshaws but restrained themselves because it was a male-dominated sphere.
“I never took up the profession to make a record, In fact I was unaware of the Limca Book Records bestowing the title upon me, until I was approached by people,” she says in a video interview with Pune-based Autowale.in. She is associated with them to encourage women to take up the profession of driving.
But her journey, like most women who established themselves in a male bastion, came with its share of struggles. Her dream began in a social setting where most women in Indian homes were given basic education, just to be married off and serve the conventional roles of homemakers and child bearers.
But Shila, being the rebellious girl that she was, wouldn’t let marriage come in the way of fulfilling her dream of driving.
“I wanted to make it my profession. My parents initially objected to my decision, but now they have accepted me for who I am,” she told DNA.
But the familial pressure wasn’t the only thing bogging her down. The societal pressure was no less. She had decided to challenge the patriarchy after all.
When she kickstarted her journey as an auto-driver, she came across many people who were unwilling to rent out their auto-rickshaws to her on the sole ground that she was a woman and they were unsure if she would safely drive their vehicle, constantly reiterating the stereotype of women being bad/unsafe drivers.
But she wasn’t going to give up. She got in touch with various women self-help groups who helped her avail of opportunities to drive auto-rickshaws when the regular drivers were on leave.
Earning a meagre income from these rides and saving every penny, she managed to buy an auto-rickshaw and rented a room in a slum for herself.
She remembers how parents would often point at her, telling their kids of the lady auto-rickshaw driver in their neighbourhood. Despite garnering appreciation from many about having the courage to break into the male-dominated professions, there were certainly some who looked down upon her for joining the profession.
But her pillars of strength during these times were her fellow drivers. She recalls an incident when she felt extremely threatened when a traffic constable, hit her in a heated argument.
She hit him right back and was moved to see her auto-rickshaw union members joining hands to protest against the attack.
From a matador, a school bus and autorickshaw Shila boasts of having driven for over 13 years from 1988 to 2001. It is unfortunate that she had to stop driving due to health issues. But that did not deter her from starting her own travel company with her husband, Shirish Kamble, also an auto driver, with whom she has two daughters.
Shirish, who stood by his wife through thick and thin, encourages people, especially men to change, their views towards women.
“If you support your women to chase their dreams and aspirations, without a doubt will they lead the progress of their families,” he told Autowale.
One of the prime reasons why Shila encourages more and more women to join driving is to allow the better safety of women. With the growing incidents of crimes against women, she believes women feel a lot safer travelling alone when other women drive them.
Shila believes gender and social bias is no way should dictate what anybody wants to do with their lives.
“More women need to break barriers and make a place for themselves in male-centric fields,” she told DNA.
Her dream is to start an academy to train women auto-rickshaw drivers.
“I feel that an academy by a woman for women will instill more courage and faith among women drivers,’’ she says.
We salute trailblazers like Shila who did not give up her dreams in the face of opposition and continues to inspire a generation of women auto-drivers across India. We hope many women continue to join the profession and owns the lanes of their India, like the efficient drivers they are!
The term ‘village head’ generally brings to minds images of stout kurta-clad men with impressive moustaches and turbans. The mukhia of Singhwahini village in Bihar is a notable exception.
Petite and pertinacious, Ritu Jaiswal has been leading the development of this nondescript, flood-affected village for the past few years. Married to IAS officer Arun Kumar, the 40-year-old mother of two kids shunned an easygoing life with her bureaucrat spouse in Delhi’s posh Khelgaon to work towards the betterment of Singhwahini and its residents.
Born and brought up in Vaishali in Bihar, Ritu was passionate about social work from a young age. As a school student, she would frequently participate in local campaigns that aimed to help underprivileged people, especially destitute women. The civic-minded girl continued doing so even while pursuing her graduation (and later, post graduation) in Economics.
In 1996, Ritu married Arun Kumar, a 1995 batch civil servant. A few years after marriage, when Ritu visited her in-laws’ ancestral home in Sitamarhi’s Sonbarsha block, she was deeply distressed to see the multiple problems plaguing the village. There was no electricity, no proper roads, no sanitation and no source of safe drinking water. Open defecation was rampant while the village school languished sans teachers.
Resolving to change this situation, Ritu became a frequent visitor to Singhwahini. Her first step was to tackle the pathetic state of education in the village.
One of the village girls had completed her BEd and was working as a school teacher in Bokaro. Ritu offered the girl a higher monthly salary from her own pocket if she would return to the village and teach the students who had dropped out from school. The girl acquiesced and started teaching the 25 girls who had dropped out from the village school.
Ritu’s efforts paid off when, for the first time in the history of the village, 12 of these girls passed their matriculation exams with flying colours in 2015!
Next, Ritu started conducting village meetings on pertinent issues such as open defecation, domestic violence, female infanticide and organic farming. She even brought a projector to show relevant videos and infotainment seminars to the villagers.
When enquiries revealed that an electrification scheme had been sanctioned for Singhwahini but not implemented, Ritu mobilised a campaign involving the villagers to get the scheme executed. Thanks to the well-planned initiative, for the first time, bulbs were lit and fans came to life in the village’s 80-odd households
Tackling one issue after another, Ritu was soon spending more time in the village than at her home in Delhi. That’s when she realized that if she was to fulfil her dream of transforming the village, she would have to move full-time to the village.
It was an extremely tough decision for her — choosing between her family and her mission — but Ritu’s husband and children gave her their full support. They told her that, whenever possible, they would travel to the village to spend time with her. Her daughter even told her that she would willing study in a residential school so that their mother could teach the village kids.
These were the words that finally gave Ritu the courage and conviction to take the big step of living and working full-time in the remote hamlet.
In 2016, the villagers of Singhwahini requested Ritu to contest elections for the post of the village mukhia (head of the panchayat). Though politics had never been a part of her plan, the villagers’ faith in her leadership convinced to her contest the election.
Winning by a huge margin (she bagged 72% of the votes!), the young mukhia immediately got to work. Her first challenge was the widespread practice of open defecation. To tackle this, Ritu created an ‘army’ of women who would swing into action every morning around 4 am to reason with men and women on their way to defecate in the fields.
She also collaborated with the District Magistrate of the region, Rajeev Roshan, to build around 2000 toilets (one in every home) in the villages under her panchayat. The hard work paid off when Singhwahini was declared ODF (open defecation free) in October 2016. The next thing she targeted were the village’s crumbling mud roads.
Realising that the government funds were bogged in interminable delays and that the villagers were reluctant to part with their own savings, Ritu began using her money to upgrade the village roads. Moved by her efforts, the villagers gradually began contributing to the project, helping the work complete faster. Today, all the kuchha roads in Singhwahini have been converted to paved pucca roads
Ritu’s next project was plugging the loopholes in the village’s PDS (Public Distribution System). With the BDO (Block Development officer) looking the other way and dealers refusing to reply to her queries, she and her small team embarked on a mammoth effort to collect the ration cards of the 14000 villagers covered by the panchayat.
Once this was done, Ritu’s team compared and tabulated the details to calculate the exact requirement per family and cross-check if there had been any mismatch/hoarding in the allotment. She then submitted these details to the DM, thanks to which, corrupt officials and dealers were weeded out. As a plus, the allocation of ration supplies also became more efficient.
Asked if being a woman was a disadvantage at any point of her journey, Ritu told Times of India,
“Officials often took me for granted at times, but my education helped me overcome that. For instance, our BDO’s facial expression was to be seen to be believed when I confronted him with an excel sheet containing the PDS ration data. I also got a few threatening calls from landlords when I tried to educate farm workers about their rights.”
But Ritu stuck to the path she had chosen for herself, undeterred by the taunts and threats that came her way. Soon after the election, she had appointed teachers in all the nine schools under the panchayat. However, while these teachers had cut down on their frequent leave-taking (thanks to Ritu’s regular inspections), they would often come very late to school.
To tackle this issue, Ritu encouraged the villagers to resort to ‘Gandhigiri’. Whenever the teachers came late, one of the students would go inform the villagers who would all collect around the school gate. Greeted with folded hands and the wry words “Kya sir, hum aapka do ghante se intezaar kar rahein hain“, the flustered and frightened teachers soon began mending their ways.
Next, Ritu established vocational training centres (such as tailoring centres for women and phone repair workshops for men) to provide livelihood opportunities for the villages. She also invited various NGOs to partner with the Panchayat in spreading awareness and addressing the issues concerning the village, especially skill development and sustainable farming.
Thanks to her efforts, self-employment has increased among the villagers, with several shops being opened in the village and neighbouring area. A team from ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) has also started working with local cultivators. All the 12 wards under the panchayat have their own hand pumps and construction is underway for the creation of small reservoirs (for the benefit of farmers and local fishermen).
In August 2017, when massive floods hit the Sitamarhi district, Ritu had the choice of returning to Delhi, but she didn’t do that. Instead, she worked night and day, participating in the rescue missions, helping the injured and living alongside the flood victims in the relief camps (re-purposed school buildings). Little wonder that this gutsy sarpanch holds a very special place in the heart of all her villagers.
In 2016, Ritu was awarded the Ucch Sikshit Adarsh Yuva Sarpanch award for her exemplary work as a village head. The only mukhia in Bihar to win this coveted award, Ritu has shown how women can elbow past patriarchal structures to powerful effect. And last but not the least, her inspiring story reveals how good grassroots leadership can make a huge difference in a country plagued by corruption and inefficiency.
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Our society is inquisitive by nature, especially when it comes to someone’s most personal and intimate life. One of the standard FAQs around here is, “When are you getting married and settling down?”
From this stems another vital question, “When are you going to have children? You ought to get on with it; your biological clock is ticking away.”
While for some couples, conception happens easily; others have a hard time. A report published by EY states that infertility affects nearly 10-15% of married couples in India. Nearly 27.5 million couples who are actively seeking children suffer from infertility.
In addition to the emotional strain on the couples, there is a constant need to keep answering pesky “well-wishers”, which takes an even heavier toll on them.
Pregnancy home-test kit
Ankita (name changed) is a 35-year-old management professional. Married for eight years, she has suffered three miscarriages. This not only affected her physically and mentally but also left her emotionally very raw and vulnerable. The constant suggestions and jibes by her extended family certainly did not help the matter in any way.
Eventually, Ankita underwent In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and after two failed attempts got pregnant the third time around. When speaking to her, she recounted how traumatic the entire experience was for her.
“I had no one to speak to about what I was going through. There was only so much that my husband would understand what I was going through. Speaking to my family about it was not an option, and the doctor had no time beyond administering the injections and doing my routine check-up,” she said.
Mentioning how she had so many questions and doubts, she said it was a tough time as she had no one to seek clarity or direction from.
Infertilitydost.com is a portal started by Gitanjali Banerjee and is your one port of call to answer all queries related to IVF, offer support, chat in discussion boards and read expert blogs on the subject.
Gitanjali Banerjee
Speaking to The Better India, Gitanjali said, “Having gone through a long tryst with infertility and having run and hidden from it for a very long time, I realised that I was spending a lot of time and energy in battling these issues rather than focus on getting treated.”
Gitanjali knew that she wanted to do something for others who were in similar situations. “Having felt immense pain, rejection, and stress because of this entire process I wanted to connect with others and find out if they were also going through similar issues. I started a closed Facebook group, and once the conversation started there I realised the need to have a larger forum,” she said.
The Facebook group proved to be a Pandora’s box. There were so many complex issues that were being discussed. It was only then that Gitanjali realised that there were so many things that were tied together with infertility. She saw a lot of marital discord, psychological issues and women who would go into depression with every failed IVF attempt.
While there were many blogs and discussion forums for infertility and IVF, Gitanjali did not find any India-centric content. “This void is what I hoped to fill with the launch of infertilitydost,” she says.
While it is a very personal and delicate subject, it certainly does help to relate with people who have gone through the same pains / or are going through them now. It gives one a sense of belonging, that you are not alone in this world, and there is a system to support you if you require it.
Here’s more power to Gitanjali and infertilitydost.com.
Recently if you visited Twitter or Facebook, you must have seen innumerable posts with the #metoo hashtag. The world has united to raise voices against sexual assault or any form of sexual harassment.
It is a social media catharsis against those unbearable stares, unwanted touches, and repulsive comments.
The entire movement started with American actress Alyssa Milano asking women who had been sexually harassed or assaulted to publicly share their experience using the hashtag: me too.
#MeToo campaign has taken the internet by storm, over 4.7 million people are engaged in the #metoo conversation with over 12 million posts, comments, and reactions. By posting on social media both women and men from all over the world are trying to show the sheer number of those who have received unsolicited sexual attention in any form, from unwelcome groping to rape.
Most women do not report the assault because the country is straddled with bureaucratic norms. India’s National Crime Records Bureau data revealed that in 2012, 24,923 rape cases were reported across India.
Notably, out of these, 24,470 were committed by parents/family, relatives, neighbours and other known persons. This leaves us with a total of 453 cases of ‘stranger rape’ or rape where the culprit is a stranger to the sexual assault victim/survivor. In essence, men known to the victim committed 98 percent of reported rapes. This itself is a staggering figure.
The entire campaign has brought to light how difficult it is to raise voices against sexual harassment even in countries where there are severe laws in place to tackle harassment and assault. We need to battle with the idea of everyday sexism.
If we contemplate about the state of affairs, in most of the incidences, sexual assault happens where one party exercises a certain amount of power over the other.
Quoting the famous line from the movie “Disclosure” : sexual harassment is about power not about sex.
It is now more important than ever to be aware of the rights that women have and the laws they can turn to address the rampant sexual harassment and assault.
To report an incidence it is critical to understand what comprises sexual harassment. The various kinds of acts that comprise harassment or rape at the workplace include the demand or request for sexual favours, explicit sexual overtures or physical contact and advances. With the growing popularity and use of the internet, sexual harassment can take place online too.
Here are we few laws that every woman should know which protect her from all forms of sexual violence-
Staring at a woman is an offence if it makes her feel uncomfortable even for a few seconds. Blatantly ogling a woman is characterised as an offence, thus.
Singing lewd songs or catcalling directed at women in public spaces is considered harassment under IPC Section 294. Offenders can be jailed for three months or be fined or both.
Following or stalking someone is a crime. If you follow someone with or without their knowledge it amounts to stalking and is considered as an act of sexual harassment. As per section 354(D) of IPC the man can face jail term ranging three to five years coupled with a fine.
If a woman categorically indicates her disinterest but if the person continues to ask for sexual favours he is punishable under IPC section 354(A). The offender can land in jail for one to three years or fine or both. In this case, if someone tries to threaten you with physical harm, harm to your reputation or property the offender can be imprisoned for a maximum of two years under Section 503 of IPC.
If a senior colleague demands sexual favours in exchange for work benefits, promotions or salary hikes, it is an act of sexual harassment as per Sexual Harassment of women at Workplace Act, 2013. Also, every organisation having more than 10 employees is required to have an Internal Complaints Committee. Check if your workplace has one.
Watching, capturing or sharing images of women engaging in a private act without her consent is voyeurism and is punishable under IPC Section 354 (C). Offender can face a jail term for one to three years in addition to fine. If the man is convicted a second time then he faces jail term ranging from three to seven years along with a fine. If a guy is morphing your pictures and sharing them with an intent to defame and harass you, it is a crime as per Section 499. The punishment may include jail up to two years.
Posting any obscene or defamatory material on a public online platform intending to harass a woman is a crime under Section 67 of IT Act. The accused can face jail time of two years coupled with a fine.
If you face any of the above incidences you must immediately consult a Criminal lawyer and file an FIR(First Information Report) with a local police station. When you file a case for sexual assault, you can always ask that the statement is recorded in a language you understand. If that is not possible, make sure the statement is translated and explained to you by the officer recording it.
The countryside around Thrissur, Kerala is paddy rich and filled with gangly coconut trees. And if you glance up one, you just might see a strange device – seemingly out of place on its narrow trunk. But most stark might be what, or who, is atop it – a woman plucking the coconuts!
A sight nobody beheld a decade ago, and one that addresses a crucial problem, in fact.
A family of five in Kerala consumes at least one coconut every day. Be it as oil, pulp or milk – the coconut’s versatility is incredulous! To feed this obsession, Kerala has 180 million coconut trees, most of which grow in front and backyards of its residents.
However, it is not always so easy to get your hands on one, thanks to an acute shortage of climbers to pluck the fruit off the tree. Coconuts have to be plucked every 45 days ideally, and the state needs at least 50,000 climbers for its trees, according to the Kerala’s Economics and Statistics Department data.
Ten years ago, the state realised the want of climbers could slowly be fulfilled by opening the job market to (whom else) women.
Women from districts like Kozhikode, Thrissur and Malappuram were trained and given subsidised two-wheelers and mobiles. And more importantly, they were given climbing devices, which prevent chest pain and the scars that climbers usually have.
Many women in the district now earn up to Rs. 650 a day by climbing coconut trees – something no one would have imagined possible just a few decades ago.
Coconut climbing made easier thanks to this device!
Women, who were once relegated to society’s backwaters, are now (literally) scaling new heights!
So who helped bring this, and so many other, revolutions in the lives of Kerala women? It was all thanks to the country’s, if not the world’s, most successful anti-poverty and gender justice movements – The Kudumbashree.
Kudumbashree women at a meeting.
THE KUDUMBASHREE:
To be poor, to be from a backward caste and to be a woman are a triple blow in Kerala. And any attempt at alleviation requires patience, time and a comprehensive program that goes beyond just handing over some money or food as charity. What it requires a transformation from the ground up.
And so, nearly two decades ago, the state began the Kudumbashree, a path-breaking venture that has considerably helped eradicate poverty in the region.
Kudumbashree translates to ‘prosperity of the family’. ‘Kudumb’ in Malayalam is family, while ‘shree’ means prosperity. The solution is simple – Successful familial units contribute to a healthy society.
Words that describe Kudumbashree’s mission include holistic, participatory and woman-oriented.
It organizes poor women at the grass root level and enhances their socio-economic standing through micro-credits and women empowerment initiatives via vocational training, education and healthcare. Its innovative poverty reduction approach is implemented through local self-government (LSGs).
Today, nearly 5 million women are a part of Kudumbashree, making it the world’s largest women empowerment project. And all this in a state one-tenth the size of California.
HOW IT WORKS:
Kudumbashree forms small groups of economically backward women and provides them with a blend of microfinance, state support and dynamic community action.
The backbone of Kudumbashree is the Neighbourhood Group (NHG), which comprises of no more than 20 women from a ward in a district.
Kudumbashree women at a neighbourhood group meeting
The idea behind this is that neighbours or people in a similar socio-economic community are more likely to understand each other’s problems than an arbitrary grouping of women, in spite of similar economic backgrounds.
Meetings occur on a weekly basis in houses of NHG members where schemes and other issues are discussed.
Joining Kudumbasree means that women have to go for weekly meetings, where they meet other women and socialize. This makes them confident about themselves, and also ensures a steady monthly income.
“More than anything, it has liberated women to get out of the house and go to work. In a traditionally male-dominated society, women participating in the polity, going to vocational training programs and starting small businesses was not the norm. Kudumbashree helped changed this, “says K.J Sohan, former mayor of Kochi.
What does this translate into on ground? Take the Kudumbashree kitchens, for example. Community kitchens have been set in almost every district, and some even promote traditional food habits of tribal people which involve the consumption of locally-grown foodgrains and vegetables.
“I have to work in shifts only for 15 days of the month. I was trained by Kudumbashree members to cook and perform other service-oriented jobs in the cafeteria. The skill, money and time it gives me are so beneficial. Life has changed after I became a member of the Kudumbashree,” says Kumari Saju, a cook at a Kudumbashree cafeteria in Kottayam.
The advantage of being apart of this network is it also encourages small time business. So Kumari and a group of women from her ward – Edamula in the Akalakulnnam district in Kottayam – are also able to grow their stitching business, where they tailor blouses and salwar-kameez suits for women in the area.
But most crucially, at these weekly meetings, all members bring their thrift or savings, which can be as low as Rs 10.
Thrift, or small savings, can help alleviate poverty and decrease risk more than debt. Kudumbashree women have demonstrated that the poor can and will save if given proper opportunities and incentives.
“The idea behind small savings is to encourage women, even those below the poverty line, to save. Savings are collected and recycled in the system by way of sanctioning loans,” says Priya Paul, project manager with Kudumbashree for more than ten years.
Each NHG opens a joint account in a local bank, while each participant is given a separate passbook. Once trained to make simple banking transactions, these women become more empowered.
These loans are heavily subsidized by the state and can go upwards of Rs. 10 lakh.
How much could small savings by economically backward women possibly be? Most recent public figures (in 2014) said the group saved to the tune of Rs 2200 crore!
THE ORGANISATION:
THE INVOLVEMENT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS OR PANCHAYATS
ADS members at a meeting
“One of the peculiarities of Kudumbashree is the extensive involvement of the local and state government, which has resulted in the success of the scheme,” says Priya.
Women in Kerala agree on one thing: That men do not consult women on any matters of importance. However, this, in turn, has also led them to believe that women will do better in local government “since they identify with the family more easily — and at the village panchayat level, you are dealing with families.”
Kudumbashree, hence, was a turning point for the life of women in Kerala – an entry point into public life.
One of the central themes within the Kudumbashree idea has the smooth unity between the Kudumbashree’s NHGs and CDS and the local panchayats within whose jurisdictions they operate.
In theory, the CDS and the local panchayat are independent. This is because their elections are held separately with completely different electorates.
Kudumbashree women at a local meeting in Wayanad.
But in reality – they cannot exist without the panchayats. It’s an active collaboration. The CDS representative even has a room in the panchayat.
When political parties want candidates (In Kerala, 50% of panchayat seats are reserved for women), they select them from the Kudumbashree because of the leadership opportunities that are given to local women.
“Even though the leadership program is not very systematic, it still gives these women exposure to microfinance, bank processes and other vocational programs and this enables a sense of leadership,” says Aleyamma Vijayan, the founder of an NGO called Sakhi in Kerala.
“There have been versions of this in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka – but what makes it different here is the involvement of local panchayats. The decentralisation of the panchayat plays a crucial role, and understanding Kudumbashree’s success without understanding the part of the panchayat is impossible,” says Aleyamma.
Kerala has development indicators that are comparable to developed countries and has been experimenting with decentralisation and participatory local democracy.
Local governments were vested with the powers and responsibilities of economic development and social justice in their respective regions.
Kerala Panchayats are also comparatively rich in India.
“They have lakhs of rupees and must allocate at least 10% of that for the women’s component plan (WPC). They cannot their budget sanctioned from the state govt it that do not have a solid idea for the WPC,” Aleyamma says.
And in all of this, Kudumbashree is a crucial cog that keeps the wheels of the Panchayat running, allowing them to meet their goals, year on year.
This includes matching up programmes between the two and co-operation when using institutions run by the panchayat.
Indeed, a crucial integration is the sharing of resources from both sides. How it works is that Community Development Societies present a ‘mini plan’ to the local panchayat, which folds in the ideas with their governing policies and decisions.
SO WHO IS ELIGIBLE?
Poverty is more than the lack of income. In Kudumbashree, to identify the poor, a nine-point non-monetary risk indicator index has been developed. The indicators’ are simple, transparent, easily understood by the community and include various manifestations of poverty.
Therefore, Kudumbashree members are not identified only by absolute poverty or income levels.
SUCCESS IN NUMBERS:
It’s hard to find a single area of work Kudumbashree’s efforts have not penetrated. Be it higher education, the flowering of small-scale businesses or even in healthcare, Kudumbashree women have been able to leverage their opportunities to work in various fields.
Perhaps Kudumbashree’s most successful endeavours have been in agriculture. Farming has taken off in a big way among women in the Kudumbashree’s collective farming and ‘Samagra’ projects, implemented with active participation from Panchayats, supported by a farming subsidy.
Not only has the project increased agricultural production, but it has also brought considerable fallow land back under cultivation and financially empowered thousands of women.
Agriculture has been one of Kudumbashree’s most successful sectors
Kudumbashree volunteers are already cultivating all major food crops, including rice, vegetables and fruits in select areas through more than 60,000 Joint Liability Groups (JLG).
Some 2,50,000 Kudumbashree women throughout Kerala have come together to form farming collectives which jointly lease land, cultivate it, use the produce to meet their consumption needs and sell the surplus to local markets.
To keep the cultivation ball rolling, a handful of measures have been further adopted. These include seed banking, soil testing facilities and a steady credit flow by linking the JLGs with banks. And taking the solution from end-to-end, marketing facilities have also been provided through the creation of weekly and monthly markets through Community Development Societies (CDSs).
And that is just farming. Kudunmbashree’s ripple effects spread to nearly every aspect of Kerala society, and its rejuvenating vision continues to grow daily.
THE ROAD AHEAD
“While encouraging savings and entrepreneurship is what the Kudumbashree has always strived to do, right now we want to include other marginalised people into the organisation like tribals and transgenders. We hope it will benefit them as it has to the lakhs of women who were and are a part of it,” concludes Priya.
This article is a part of The Better India’s attempt to drive conversation around the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and where India stands with regards to meeting these goals. Many organisations across the country are helping India proceed towards the fulfilment of these goals and this series is dedicated to recognising their efforts and the kind of impact they have created so far.
Droughts, repeated crop failures and overburdening debts are the primary reasons why farmers in India are left with no option other than taking their lives—sometimes it is an entire family that succumbs to the garbling clutches of death.
However, the village of Hinglajwadi in Osmanabad tehsil of Maharashtra has a different story to tell. Falling under a zone that perpetually grapples with various agrarian crises, not a single farmer in the village has committed suicide owing to droughts and crop failure.
And how did this tiny village manage to achieve the unimaginable when villages across the country continue to lose their agrarians on a rising number?
Yes, you read that right—every single woman in Hinglajwadi banded together to take charge of the precarious situation.
In fact, if you happen to visit the village, you are highly unlikely to find any of them tending to household chores. Rather you would find the men running the errands.
Quite a role reversal for a village in India, isn’t it?
“The women have gone to Osmanabad town to pay their instalments to the banks and self-help groups. They will also visit the market to buy supplies for their businesses and shops,” said Achyut Katkate, a village resident to Times of India.
However, the men here have no qualms of having given the backseat. Most beam with pride when talking about their wives and how their perseverance helped sustain the village when everywhere else people were ending their lives.
Katkate’s wife Komaltai and the remaining women developed a sustainable model that eventually paved the way for a financial revolution in the village.
“Rain deficit and drought are permanent here. A few years ago, the rising number of farmer suicides in the region had got us worried. So we came together to save our families and children. First, we decided to take care of the basic needs,” said Rekha Shinde, who is a farmer.
They started with a plan wherein cases of farmer suicide, the family and children should be able to fend for themselves by farming a small patch of land. However, this was met with downright dissent from the menfolk who insisted that the women belonged to the homes and not fields.
But these women were strong-willed and persisted until the men conceded and began cultivating vegetables together.
Shortly enough, the women reaped the fruits of their hard work by carefully managing their limited resources. Growing enough to not just sustain their families, the women managed to even rake in a good profit by selling the surplus crops.
This experiment proved to be a game changer for the women who gained the confidence to venture out further. Spreading out wings, they took to Osmanabad next to know more about various government schemes for farmers.
“The government babus were unwilling to give us any information and assist us. We then started visiting them in groups. We were determined to bring all aid and schemes to the village,” said Manjushree Kshirsagar, another farmer.
Today, there are over 200 self-help groups in the village, which collectively churns out a turnover of over ₹1 crore. Through SHG-assisted training, the women have not just ventured into farming but areas like poultry farms, goat rearing, dairy business, clothing shops, sewing business and beauty parlours as well.
“In latter days from Brahma came,
To rule our land, a noble dame,
Kind was her heart and bright her fame,
Ahilya was her honoured name,” writes poet Joanna Baillie in 1849 in honour of one of the greatest Maratha woman rulers of Malwa.
Born in the village of Chondi in Jamkhed, Ahmednagar, Maharani Ahilyabai or as she was fondly referred to Rajmata Ahilyabai Holkar was the Holkar Queen of the Malwa kingdom.
Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar or Malwa. Source: Wikimedia
Her father, Mankoji Rao Shinde, was the Patil (chief) of the village. Despite women’s education being a far cry in the village, her father homeschooled her to read and write.
While Ahilya did not come from a royal lineage, most deem her entry into history a twist of fate. It dates back to when the acclaimed Lord of the Malwa territory, Malhar Rao Holkar, spotted an eight-year-old Ahilyabai at the temple service feeding the hungry and poor, on his stop in Chaundi while travelling to Pune.
Moved by the young girl’s charity and strength of character, he decided to ask her hand in marriage for his son Khanderao Holkar. She was married to Khanderao Holkar in 1733 at the tender age of 8.
But distress was quick to befall the young bride when her husband Khanderao was killed in the battle of Kumbher in 1754, leaving her a widow at only 21.
When Ahilyabai was about to commit Sati, her father-in-law Malhar Rao refused to let it happen.
He had been her strongest pillar of support at the time. But a young Ahilyabai could see her kingdom fall like a pack of cards after her father-in-law passed away in 1766, only 12 years after the death of his son Khanderao.
The old ruler’s death led to his grandson and Ahilyabai’s only son Male Rao Holkar ascending the throne under her regency.
The last straw came when the young monarch Male Rao too died, a few months into his rule, on 5 April 1767, thus creating a vacuum in the power structure of the kingdom.
One can imagine how a woman, royalty or not, would suffer after losing her husband, father-in-law and only son. But Ahilyabai stood undeterred. She did not let the grief of her loss affect the administration of the kingdom and the lives of her people.
She took matters into her own hands. She petitioned the Peshwa after her son’s death, to take over the administration herself. She ascended the throne and became the ruler of Indore on 11 December 1767.
While there was indeed a section of the kingdom that objected to her assumption to the throne, her army of Holkars stood by her and supported their queen’s leadership.
Just a year into her rule, one saw the brave Holkar queen protect her kingdom – fighting off invaders tooth and nail from plundering Malwa. Armed with swords and weapons, she led armies into the battlefield.
There she was, the queen of Malwa, slaying her enemies and invaders on battlefronts with four bows and quivers of arrows fitted to the corners of the howdah of her favourite elephant.
Her confidante on military matters was Subhedar Tukojirao Holkar (also Malhar Rao’s adopted son) whom she appointed the head of the military.
The Queen of Malwa, apart from being a brave queen and proficient ruler, was also an erudite politician. She observed the bigger picture when the Maratha Peshwa couldn’t pin down the agenda of the British.
In her letter to the Peshwa in 1772, she had warned him, calling the British embrace a bear-hug: “Other beasts, like tigers, can be killed by might or contrivance, but to kill a bear it is very difficult. It will die only if you kill it straight in the face, Or else, once caught in its powerful hold; the bear will kill its prey by tickling. Such is the way of the English. And given this, it is difficult to triumph over them.”
From a tiny village to a flourishing city, Indore prospered during her 30-year rule. She was famous for having built numerous forts and roads in Malwa, sponsoring festivals and giving donations to many Hindu temples.
Even outside her kingdom, her philanthropy reflected in the construction of dozens of temples, ghats, wells, tanks and rest-houses stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the pilgrimage centres in the south.
Ahilya Ghat by the Ganges in Varanasi. Source: Wikimedia
The Holkar queen also embellished and beautified various sites including Kashi, Gaya, Somnath, Ayodhya, Mathura, Hardwar, Kanchi, Avanti, Dwarka, Badrinarayan, Rameshwar and Jaganathpuri as recorded by the Bharatiya Sanskritikosh.
Her capital at Maheshwar was a melting pot of literary, musical, artistic and industrial achievements. She opened her capital’s doors to stalwarts like Marathi poet Moropant, Shahir Anantaphandi and Sanskrit scholar, Khushali Ram.
Her capital was known for is distinct craftsmen, sculptors and artists who were paid handsomely for their work and kept in high regards by the Queen. She also moved on to establishing a textile industry in the city.
Ahilyabai held public audiences every day to help address the grievances of her people. She was always available to anyone who needed her ear.
Historians write how she encouraged all within her realm and her kingdom to do their best. During her reign, the merchants produced their most elegant clothes and trade flourished to no end. No more was the farmer a mere victim of oppression but a self-sufficient man in his own right.
“Far and wide the roads were planted with shady trees, and wells were made, and rest-houses for travellers. The poor, the homeless, the orphaned were all helped according to their needs. The Bhils, who had long been the torment of all caravans, were routed from their mountain fastnesses and persuaded to settle down as honest farmers. Hindu and Musalman alike revered the famous Queen and prayed for her long life,” writes Annie Besant.
A woman ahead of her times, Ahilyabai’s greatest sorrow continued to remain the irony that her daughter jumped into the funeral pyre and became a Sati upon the death of her husband, Yashwantrao Phanse.
She was 70 when she died and was succeeded by her commander-in-chief, Tukoji Rao Holkar I.
Statue of Ahilyabai Holkar. Source: Wikimedia
“Indore long mourned its noble Queen, happy had been her reign, and her memory is cherished with deep reverence unto this day,” writes Besant.
Six years ago, Dolly Singh, a media professional, went to Hampi in Karnataka for a trek. At the time, she weighed around 85 kg to 90 kg.
While on the trek, Dolly lost her balance and slipped, which sprained her ankle. When she showed it to a doctor, he was worried that her leg might not be able to handle her weight, and her bones might get weaker. The doctor suggested she lose some weight.
Before this, Dolly never had issues with her weight. However, she considered the doctor’s advice.
For Dolly, it wasn’t as much about losing weight, as it was about being physically active. “This was the first time I became active. I tried everything. Functional training, built up my stamina, aerobics, Zumba and other things around it. But I got bored.
Two years into it, I landed in a yoga class. I never entered the class thinking I want to lose weight. I never had constraints about how big I was. However, it was the people around me in the yoga class who were surprised because they wondered how a big-bodied person could do this,” Dolly tells The Better India.
The yoga teacher, however, motivated Dolly. She started enjoying yoga.
She liked how it wasn’t just about paying attention to your breath and posture, but also your mind.
Source: Dolly Singh
“The first four months were amazing. But when my teacher got replaced with some other trainer, things changed. He wasn’t as good, so I went back to running. However, I missed practising yoga. I got a personal trainer, but it was too expensive. Six months later, I decided just to download videos and practice at home. And that’s all I do now. 80% of the yoga I’ve learnt is through videos,” she tells TBI.
Dolly’s Facebook and Instagram profile document her progress in yoga from the past 2-2.5 years. Whenever she tells someone she’s 34 years old, they find it hard to believe.
Through her social media accounts, she wants to promote the idea that yoga is for everyone, and hence the name ‘Yoga For All’.
“I could do pole dancing tomorrow if I wanted. It’s all about strength, not how much you weigh. It’s only a physical activity. Through my brand of yoga, I want to promote inclusivity. You don’t have to be flexible to do yoga. You have to do yoga to become flexible. And being plus-size has got nothing to do with it,” she says.
Being a plus-size woman and a yoga practitioner, who has been trying to promote body positivity, has had its share of negativity.
Once, a yoga teacher told Dolly that she should lose weight and only then would she be able to move on to advanced postures.
Source: Dolly Singh
Dolly believes it is the abnormal beauty standards for women which is the problem. Trainers look in disbelief because they haven’t seen someone like her practice yoga.
Recently, Dolly walked the ramp at the Amazon India Fashion Week for Milind Soman’s clothing brand Deivee, as she feels the platform could use different kinds of people, especially women who don’t fit the set beauty standards.
On a good day, her social media posts receive several derogatory comments from not just men, but women as well. “A lot of comments come from men. There are so many out there. I don’t respond to them.
But what’s disheartening is when women comment saying this is wrong. They’d compliment me but ask me to wear more ‘yoga appropriate’ clothes. They ask me to not do a ‘skin show’. I wear clothes that are comfortable. I like clothes that let me practice yoga with ease.
Society has been telling us to look a certain way, and I’m here trying to tell women, ‘hey, it doesn’t matter’. So it’s quite disheartening when they oppose this. With men I really don’t care,” says Dolly.
She adds that the men and women in her life have always encouraged her, and have even started respecting her more.
Source: Dolly Singh
“I practice yoga in office, and they’ve provided a space for me where I can do that. Random people come to me in office and shower compliments. One of our top bosses once came up to me and asked me how my yoga practice was going, which was great,” she says.
Yoga is a top priority for Dolly. She practices six days a week for minimum an hour every day. She prioritises yoga over most things. Also, she doesn’t eat processed food or fast food.
To the internet trolls, Dolly says she doesn’t mind if it makes them uncomfortable. Because it’s meant to. It’s the only way big-bodied women will be able to fight for inclusivity and be represented better in society.
In a move to encourage more and more women to take the wheel, the Karnataka Government is formulating a special policy.
Under this, over 50% of driver posts will be reserved for women in state-run bus services like Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) and Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC).
Representational purpose only. Source: Facebook
After a review meeting last Friday, Transport minister H M Revanna asked the concerned officials at KSRTC & BMTC to draft a policy which will give incentives to women candidates willing to take up driving heavy transport vehicles for the state transport.
Not only will the women be trained, but will also be provided with a special stipend, at the completion of them they will be deployed for service. This stipend will be paid utilising the Rs 57 crore granted under the Nirbhaya fund.
“The idea is in line with women empowerment, and the move would reduce rudeness on the road,” BMTC chairman, Nagaraj Yadav, told the Times of India.
Yadav also feels getting more women on board will better the brand equity of government transport agencies, which are otherwise infamous in the public eye for rash driving and road rage incidents.
If this special policy sees the light of the day, Karnataka may become the first state to reserve as high as 50% of driving jobs for women in state-run transport.
The transport minister spoke to the Times of India saying, “We will not only give women free training in driving HTVs, but also issue them free driving licences. While countries such as China, Britain and Italy have women bus drivers, Karnataka will become the first state to provide 50% reservation for women in this job at government transport agencies,” Revanna told TOI.
Managing director of KSRTC, S R Umashankar expressed that working out the nitty-gritty of the policy is still underway, but they are aiming to start training candidates soon.
The Karnataka Transport Ministry may partner with Karnataka Vocational Training and Skill Development Corporation limited (KVTSDC) for the training programme, likely to commence in a month.
This training module will take place at eight driving tracks of KSRTC including Bagalkot, Hassan, Malavalli, Chikkamagaluru, Humnabad, and Hagaribommanahalli.
The report also mentions how KSRTC & BMTC’s 30% reservation for women received a cold response in the past. The statistics reveal that out of a total of 11,059 drivers at KSRTC, only two are women. Also, a total of 11,152 drivers in BMTC, doesn’t have a single woman.
“An exclusive government policy is needed to encourage women to take up this kind of job, and the state government’s initiative is a welcome move,” Ameenamma Nadaf, a woman driver with KSRTC, at Tumakuru bus depot told the publication.
While State home minister R Ramalinga Reddy announced the appointment of the 57-year-old as the new director general and inspector general of police (DG-IGP), Chief Minister Siddaramaiah congratulated her by tweeting, “Congratulations to Karnataka’s first woman DG-IGP Neelamani N Raju on her appointment. Wish her a successful tenure in the post.”
Here’s all you need to know about DG-IGP Neelamani N Raju:
While most states consider the post of DGP as the top police post, it is for the first time that a unique post like director general and inspector general of police has been created in Karnataka.
57-year-old IPS officer, Neelamani N Raju, is a 1983 batch IPS officer of the Karnataka cadre.
She has worked for over 23 years in various central deputations and in Karnataka for over 10 years.
After serving as Director General of Police, Internal Security, she assumed office and took charge from former state police chief Rupak Kumar Dutta, who retired from service on Tuesday.
Before her recent stint, Neelamani N Raju also served as the DGP of Fire and Emergency Services, Chief of Home Guards, Civil Defence and the State Disaster Response force.
In 1985, soon after her confirmation, she served as the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Bengaluru Rural district.
She also served as a secretary in the embassy of India in Kathmandu, Nepal.
She has served in central intelligence as the Joint Director of the Intelligence Bureau before returning to Karnataka in 2016.
While the state had only six sanctioned DGP posts till 2016, they wrote personally to the Centre requesting it to sanction one more position for Neelamani Raju. After the sanction was approved, she was appointed the DGP of the Internal Security Division in May 2016.
Apart from being an Intelligence Bureau veteran, Neelamani N Raju is currently the highest-ranking officer in the state police department after the retirement of former DG and IGP RK Dutta.
She will serve as the state police chief for over two years and will retire in January 2020.
As per tradition, the senior-most officer becomes the chief of police. Neelamani Raju competed with Director General of CID HC Kishore Chandra and DGP of the state Anti-Corruption Bureau MN Reddi for the post before emerging victorious.
When asked about the challenges she is likely to face heading the Karnataka police, given the fact that she has served for a relatively longer time outside the state, she told Livemint, “Length of experience is not so important as the intensity of the experience.”
Speaking to the publication about her title as the first woman DG & IGP of the state, she said, “Honestly speaking, I never saw myself as a woman officer. I have always treated myself as an officer, male or female question does not arise.”
She also emphasised the need to balance the gender ratio and encourage more women to join the police force. She recollected how she was one among the only three women officers who started service in the state in 1985.
She aims to bridge the existing gap between the police and public. “There has been a lot of change, but definitely a lot more has to change because I want the police to be friendly with all citizens,” she told HT.
