When Vandana Sharma was nominated the Chairperson of a 50 year old women's group in Delhi, India called the Nari Raksha Samiti (NRS) ; little did she realize she would used ICTs on day to help rebuild lives of several dowry victims.
NRS has been actively helping poor & destitute women protect their rights in a country where a sharp increase—up 8.3% from the previous published figures of 1998-- in the crimes against women has been reported. Incidence of dowry death cases reported an increase of 15.2% in 1998; almost one-third of these cases have been reported from the adjoining state of Uttar Pradesh and from the capital city Delhi alone. NRS has been working actively towards rehabilitation of dowry victims many of whom end up losing even shelter for themselves.
As per traditional Indian & Hindu culture, a women is supposed to enter her husband's house after her marriage, only to leave it at the time of death ! For centuries, certain "custodians" of Hinduism, used this tradition to exploit helpless women; most of whom had no voice; neither any place to go after leaving their parental home. It was a life of extreme torture & exploitation for many young brides; with all members of the extended family—husband, mother-in-law, father-in-law, sisters and brothers-in-law—ganging up together to exploit them in all possible manner. Their never
ending demands forced the helpless brides to request their parents for more dowry after the marriage; and indeed for some families the demands were unending—from scooter for some to a car for another family, direct cash to help rehabilitate the business of their sons; additional dowry demands in cash or kind in the form of refrigerators, television sets, home appliances to marry off their own daughters. Despite being illegal and a punishable offense; in many parts of India dowry continues to flourish even now; forcing families to unimaginable misery. Even though special courts have also been set up by the Government to help dispose criminal cases against women; the speed of disposal of the cases by the court has been very tardy—with almost 43.5% cases registered under the dowry prohibition act pending for more than 8 years; and 84.3% cases registered under the cruelty by husbands & relatives pending for more than 6 years !! And these are only for the reported cases since due to social stigma most crimes don't even get registered with the police.
No wonder, a large number of young dowry victims suffer due to lack of awareness of their rights, illiteracy as well as oppressive social customs. NRS launched a vocational training program using a grant made available to them by the Delhi Govt. The objective was to help dowry victims attain a sustainable livelihood by teaching them advanced tailoring, interior decoration cookery, food preservation and weaving. NRS also tries to set up linkages with the industry and obtain jobs for some deserving and needy women.
Vandana was also imaginative in her approach to recognize the impact of computers in the changing Indian economy. She shared an inherent belief that women can do a far better job with the computers; and these factors motivated her to set up a small computer education center within the old, dilapidated building of the NRS. As it is, NRS was being referred many dowry cases by the Police and by the Government authorities; which helped her and her volunteers enlist the dowry victims into a sustained, long term computer education program.
From their on, the journey of dowry victims into the world of computers at NRS started. They were able to draw some voluntary faculty from the a reputed Computer institution as well as get some state of art computers. In fact Vandana invested from her hard earned savings, sizable amount into the procurement of computers. The institution currently trains 250 young women of whom 60 are dowry victims and have a history of exploitation and harassment. Rest of the women are from very impoverished and poor background. Others try to cheer up the dowry victims from time to time as well as help them rebuild their lives. The focus at of IT education at NRS is only to train them in very basic computer literacy as well as in office automation software's such as Excel, Word, and Power Point so that they can be an asset to any organization t they work with.
Vandana says ":Even if NRS is able to rehabilitate 50% of estimated dowry victims in our area; we would have accomplished a major achievement. Fortunately for NRS, the IT industry is doing well; so my girls have a hope otherwise they would not know what to do with their lives"
