End of Helpline 181: Important Questions for Uttar Pradesh

A few days ago someone asked me—what is the real face of Uttar Pradesh? I kept thinking about it for a while. Many faces loomed before me— some sinister; some monstrous; some noble and many crushed; some happy and many disappointed. All these and many other faces ranged before me and I didn’t have an answer to the question yet. I only said, the face of the state is pockmarked.

But on July 4, the real face of Uttar Pradesh appeared before my eyes and there it remains. The face of a woman who looks like a child. But she is the mother of a five-year-old girl, the wife of a differently-abled man. Not is, was.

The face is of Ayushi, a 32-year-old woman who on the evening of July 3 laid on the train tracks at the PAC crossing near her maternal home in Shyam Nagar, Kanpur, and took her life.

To what extent she must have been despondent, how completely helpless she must have felt, that even her affection for her little girl and husband could not attract her towards life. So complete and utter was her despair that she took her life, leaving behind those for whom she had worked tirelessly for many years.

Her picture appeared on my phone on the morning of the 4th. Under it was a message from a good friend and trade union leader, Dinkar Kapoor. “This is Ayushi. She has committed suicide. Her body has reached the postmortem house at Kanpur but there it is being delayed. No one is listening to her family members, who are crying their eyes out. Please help them.” What could be done was done. Her postmortem was conducted. In a few hours, her last rites were also completed and whatever was left of her body from the pyre, was immersed in the cool waters of the Ganga.

The Asha Jyoti

Ayushi had been working in Uttar Pradesh’s 181 phone helpline since 2017. To get the job, it was mandatory to be a social science graduate and have some experience in social service. Ayushi was an educated woman and got the job. She was posted at Unnao. She could not leave her husband and daughter alone in Kanpur, nor could she travel back and forth daily. So, she rented a small room in Unnao and started living there with her husband and child.

The 181 job was a 24/7 job. Every woman counsellor had to keep her phone open for calls at all times, even after a full day’s work in the office. A call could arrive at any time. Counsellors were expected to answer all the women who call them, listen to their troubles and guide and counsel them. If the caller reports a serious matter, then an intervention also had to be organised. While carrying out this rigorous duty, Ayushi also took care of her husband and child, and kept her small family going.

The 181 helpline service was started in 2016 after the “incident” in Delhi in 11 districts of Uttar Pradesh and in many other parts of the country. The scheme was inaugurated with much fanfare on March 8, International Women’s Day, after training the women who were recruited for the job. The scheme was funded by the central and state governments, but a private company, GVK EMRI, which was considered an expert on the call centre sector, was signed up to run it. The same company has also been awarded the contract to run the Ambulance and Emergency Maternity call centres which respond to the numbers 180 and 102 respectively.

In 2017, this scheme was rolled out to every district of Uttar Pradesh. In every district, an “Aasha Jyoti Kendra” (Nirbhaya’s real name was Jyoti, and her mother’s name is Asha) was opened in which this call centre was also given place. These centres were later renamed “Rani Laxmibai Asha Jyoti Kendra”.) In these centres, temporary protection homes with five beds each were built to house women in distress. Women can only stay here for five days. Police posts were also set up in these centres.

Women Counsellors

The most important work at the centre was that of the female counsellor of the 181 helpline. She would receive calls from troubled and aggrieved women talks to them and, in many cases, transport them from their home to the centre. For this, a car was also kept with them. The helpline was promoted in every village and town. Counsellors of the 181 helpline would go to girls schools and women’s colleges to spread awareness of the helpline. It is a fact that every woman and young woman in the state knew this helpline exists.

As a result, since 2016, these counsellors have intervened in five lakh fifty thousand cases. They perhaps have saved innumerable women from violence, some have been reunited with their husbands and family after counselling, some have been rescued from the clutches of kidnappers and flesh trade. An interesting thing is that the women who used to call the counsellors would often worry that they would have to go to the police station. Or, they would say that a police car should not come to take them away to the shelters, for their families would feel insulted.

Where the help of the police was needed or sought, the counsellor would also help with that.

Two years ago, the state stopped paying for the cars that would rescue the women in distress.

A year ago, 351 female counsellors across the state stopped getting their salaries. And what was their salary? Only Rs. 12,000 a month. That also stopped. The women did not stop working. Officials also kept reassuring them, your work is going on, your salary is being arranged.

Suddenly on June 1, GVK EMRI sent a notice to the head office of the 181 helpline of Lucknow that due to non-payment of dues by the government, it is ceasing work. And two or three days later, the probation officers in districts, who supervise the running of these centres, called many of the women and told them they no longer needed to come to work.

The number 181 has been removed from the website that lists the helplines in Uttar Pradesh. It is as if 181 never even existed. The salary earned by those 351 counsellors, the future of those 351 counsellors, the well-known support they provided crores of victims and women of the state, all of it has disappeared.

Snatched Jobs and Broken Spirit

What happened to the “Nirbhaya Fund” included in the Union Budget?

What happened to the promises to protect the women of the state, whose statistics report the country’s highest rates of violence? Why are those who make pledges to generate employment bent on snatching the jobs of women? All these are questions that no helpline of the Uttar Pradesh government is ready to answer.

Ayushi vacated her rented room at Unnao in late June. She owed several months of rent. It was her compulsion to vacate. She returned to her maternal home with her husband and child. There was some hope that the salary she was already owed would be paid. That somehow she would save her job.

Yogi and Modiji conducted a live programme together, in which employment was assured for 12.5 million Uttar Pradesh residents. Ayushi must also have heard the show and a beacon of hope must have flickered slowly to life in her heart. But when she was informed that the work of 181 has now stopped and no one was prepared to talk about the salary she had already earned, the cruel blow extinguished that twinkling lamp.

On the evening of July 3, she left her house saying that she was going to write her CV, that she would try to find another job. Perhaps she had decided to place her CV with the man up in the sky, and that is why she went out towards the railway line, to submit it.
 

Ayushi must have been given that name by her parents with such hope. But it is an Ayushi —one who lives long — that she was not able to become. She became a picture of the broken spirit of the people of her state, who have been belied with false promises toward shattered dreams and broken faith.
 

Subhashini Ali is a former MP and Vice President of All India People's Women Committee (AIDWA).