Smita Paliwal is like any other young girl riding the Delhi Metro — earphones attached to her smart phone gets typically yanked out of the bag as soon as she settles inside the train before quickly plugging the speakers into the ears.
Sitting on the seat next to me, she is now sliding a finger on her mobile screen, possibly searching for the Music Player icon. My eyes run along the movement of her finger. So many apps downloaded into the gadget! Among them are Scream Alarm and Bsafeyou.
What follows my curiosity about the two apps with striking names is a chit-chat, not just with Smita alone but with a few more women co-travellers around me which give a peep at a growing trend among mobile wielding women. A large number of women who regularly come out of their home have on their hand sets applications meant for their safety. There is quite a list out there: Nirbhaya — Be Fearless, Raksha, Safetipin, Circle of 6, Being Safe, IGoSafely, Pukar, SuspectsrRegistry, also SafeNoida.
“These apps can be useful. Once, while crossing a park to reach my house in Lajpat Nagar at night, I noticed a man following me. He looked suspicious and began walking fast to catch up with me. I pulled out my phone and pressed Scream Alarm. It began screaming in a woman’s voice suddenly. The stalker was taken by surprise, he turned around and began running,” Smita shares an experience to the giggles of her co-travellers. The other app on her phone — Bsafeyou, she highlights, “can alert your emergency contact numbers by notifying your location, make a video of it, even let off a siren. The best part is it can make a fake incoming call on your phone to unsettle the stalker.”
Quite a few of Smita’s friends in Delhi University, she says, “have these apps on their phones.”
Sitting next to Smita is Rajani Kumari from Kalkaji who “tried downloading the Delhi Police app for women’s safety, Himmat, some weeks ago but found it cumbersome” and has instead gone for Pukar. “It sends SMSes with your location to your emergency contact numbers. The good thing is, the phone goes into silent mode and the light on the screen dims too,” states Rajani. Noida resident Shweta Rajoura throws in her bit into the chat. She has recently downloaded the SafeNoida app from Google Play. “I don’t know how much will the app really help me while I actually face a threatening situation in Noida as UP Police is not like Delhi Police in emergency response but the app has all the important information that I may need during an emergency, in Hindi and English,” she claims.
Later, talking to Mala Bhandari, Director, Social And Development Research And Action Group, which has designed the Safe Noida app in collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, more details come forward about the application, also the aim behind it. “The idea was to use mobile technology as a preventive and awareness tool. These smart phones are now available as cheap as Rs. 4-5000, so we thought lets harness the mobile popularity, common usage and make our women and young girls informed and aware of their rights, legislations, existing complaint redress mechanism, contact details of nearest police stations of Gautam Budh Nagar district, emergency numbers, etc. at their fingertips,” says Bhandari. She highlights Safe Noida is district-focused information based app, conceptualised on the premise that information is empowerment. “If women are aware and informed, they will have courage to talk and report.”
Veteran women’s rights activist Mohini Giri, who launched the Noida app this past December, appreciates use of technology to tame violence against women but underlines, “It is also important to implement as soon as possible the Justice J. C. Verma Committee recommendations and go ahead with police reforms to help give our women an enabling environment.’ Giri expresses the same doubt as Shweta’s, “After all, technology is useless if the police response is not quick and effective enough.”
Last month, Giri’s organisation, Guild of Service, along with Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, held a day-long consultation in New Delhi on “Policing in the 21st Century: Accountable, Ethical and Effective.”
“Before the consultation, we conducted four regional and one national workshop on police reforms. Many recommendations came up in them which we tabled at the meeting. Also, we held inter-college debates in Delhi-NCR, Chennai and Lucknow on whether our police is more of a perpetrator and less of a protector.
It has given an insight into what our youth think about it,” says Giri.
The consultation also saw the launch of Durga Alarm, a women’s safety alarm that uses a simple technology, now operating in some State run buses in Bangalore as part of a pilot project. Priya Varadarajan of Durga, a citizen’s initiative which has designed the public alarm system, says she “is looking for some philanthropists to fund it so that there will be more places we can take it to.”
Varadarajan feels simple devices placed in spaces that use limited technology will work well for all. “The more advanced the technology, more we limit the reach and also increase dependence on its functioning. In this case, there is a simple limited dependence on the Durga Alarm technology, but its use is the same to every single woman or child in the bus.”
It may not be too long a wait before Durga Alarm comes to Delhi buses but use of technology to warrant women safety in the National Capital has not been lost on the ruling Aam Aadmi Party Government even though it has no control over policing in the city. According to a news report this week, AAP is looking at offering “geo-tagging” to Delhi women in distress, the ability to summon help from a nearby PCR van or a police station and inform family by just opening a smart phone based app or pressing a set of letters on the keypad of a simple phone.
But considering the way the trend is growing, it will be interesting to see whether one will even have some mobile space left for it. Before I got off the Metro, my helpful co-travellers ensured I have one in my smart phone!
