Delhi gang-rape: One year on, safety fund yet to take off completely

Finance minister P Chidambram in his budget speech had announced setting up of a Rs. 1,000 crore Nirbhaya Fund to be used to put in place infrastructure for better safety of women. The plans included putting up GPS system in transport systems and dedicated call centers for women safety.

Updated on: Dec 16, 2013, 24:36:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Finance minister P Chidambram in his budget speech had announced setting up of a Rs. 1,000 crore Nirbhaya Fund to be used to put in place infrastructure for better safety of women. The plans included putting up GPS system in transport systems and dedicated call centers for women safety.

The announcement had come after a 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped on the night of December 16.

Protests in the National Capital and elsewhere pushed the government to amend the legal provisions regarding sexual assault and creating the Nirbhaya fund.

Sources now, however, say that not a single penny has been spent from the fund set up in the finance ministry earlier this year as proposals were still being received on utilisation of the money being allocated.

The women and child development ministry had proposed a new programme to be funded from the Nirbhaya Fund, called Shubh, for vulnerable mapping of areas and categories of women who needed protection.

Other Central ministries like home, railways, communication and technology, and transport and highways too have submitted proposals but they are yet to be approved. The government, sources said was looking at mobile phone-based solutions to alert the nearest police station in case a woman felt that she was in danger. There was also proposal to install GPS systems in all public transport vehicles and police patrol vehicles. “The proposals are still under consideration,” an official said.

The government, initially, confident of getting the proposals expedited and ensuring its implementation before end of this financial year, meaning that it would have some results to show for on the ground before the 2014 elections.

There was a delay in the start of the fund because of a tug of war between the finance and women and child development ministries, as to where the fund was to be housed.

After initial protests, the women and child development ministry agreed that the fund can be administered by finance ministry.

In a year since the Delhi gang rape case, not much appears to have changed on ground.

National Crime Records Bureau’s latest data for 2012 shows that rate of crime against women in Delhi was second highest after West Bengal.

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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