Garhwa: Amidst the negativity – there is a good news has emerged from one of the naxals affected districts in Jharkhand. Yes, you heard right – it is none other than Garhwa district, which is nearly 160 kilo-meters away from the state capital Ranchi. Since quite sometimes district seems stable and defeated the naxals activities in its nearby areas. Otherwise, it was becoming a national headline due to violence by the naxals insurgency, but with passage of time things are getting changed and citizens becoming aware about every aspect of life.
In January 2015, from Panipat, Haryana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched a woman centric scheme Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP), which aims were to address the issues of low female sex ratio, alongside empowering women. The scheme will also have focussed intervention and multi-section action in almost 100 districts with low Child Sex Ratio (CSR).
Garhwa DC, Harsha Mangla realises that due to lack of connectivity with the aspirants, the feedback cannot be received, hence he planned something extra-ordinarily and thought to launched helpline dialling facility so that girls can reach out to the district administration and share their views, feedback, concerns related to ambitious project of the government.
To fix this – Mangla formed a team of some likeminded officers, including Meghna Chatterji, Aspirational District Fellow, an officer appointed by the Ministry of Home Affairs to assist DCs in Naxal-affected areas and the two officers came out with a pilot project and named it Kanya Vaani (Voice of Women).
Thus, two toll-free numbers are shared (9608460378, 9608639251) where girls could call up and shared their problems, which can further be used by the district authority. This idea came into my mind – when there was no response despite our efforts in this regard, so I decided to adopt a different approach and found two women – Zainab and Sahrana. Both are matured enough as one is trained in teaching and computer, while Sahrana is graduate. These women gathered contact details from various places, 'DC Mangla says'.
Then I asked them establish contact with those numbers to know their aspirations and hurdles that comes into their ways of developments and what could be possible solutions to the problems they are facing with; Zainab and Sahrana made calls to over thousand girls across the district, and found to have surprise outcomes from it, as majority of them were full of dreams and aspirations. 'He added'
“Many girls needed skill development to start something on the village level. Some girls even wanted to open mobile and laptop repairing centres,” Mangla said adding that the lack of opportunity for higher education was also a major concern for girl students. Both the women, Zainab and Sahrana have become role models, thanks to the scheme. Mangla's next course of action is to convert this initiative into a full-fledged scheme.“The result has been so encouraging that I have extended the scheme for another few months now and this time, besides career-related issues, we will try to get their personal problems too,” Mangla says.