A four-digit national women helpline soon

Women across India would soon be able to call a four-digit toll free number in distress or seek counseling for a particular grievance.

Updated on: Nov 23, 2012, 01:38:53 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Women across India would soon be able to call a four-digit toll free number in distress or seek counseling for a particular grievance.

The women and child development ministry had zeroed down on 1091 and 1092 as two possible national women helpline numbers.

"There is an in-principle agreement on having a national helpline for women," a senior WCD ministry official said.

1091 is being used in many states including Delhi by police as a women helpline and 1092 by social welfare and women development departments for redressal of grievances by women.

Some other states such as Maharashtra have normal telephone numbers as women help-lines, resulting in service not being utilised to its maximum.

The idea to have one women helpline across India was mooted after success of children helpline --- 1098.

The helpline called Childline is based in Mumbai and receives thousands of call from across India, which is then diverted to call centers across 200 cities in India depending on the area from where the call has come.

"It helps in creating a national sector specific database for necessary policy interventions," said an official of Childline Foundation, the organisation that runs the child helpline.

Amod Kanth, general secretary of Prayas, a civil society organisation working in child related issues, said the women helpline will have to be different from child helpline as needs of adults is different from that of children.

"We want the women helpline to be linked with crises intervention centers to provide immediate medical and rehabilitation aid to women in distress," he said.

Agreeing with the concept of national women helpline, a government official said the final decision on the number (1091 or 1092) would be taken after consultations with the state governments whose would be important for the project to succeed.

"The state governments will have to provide infrastructure to provide relief to callers," the official said, adding that the helpline would be one stop relief cum counseling center for women across India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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