CHANDIGARH: A girl from Mewat district of Haryana, a backward Muslim-dominated area, will be the brand ambassador of the ‘Selfie with Daughter’ campaign, an initiative which has been lauded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and which completed four years on Sunday.
The brain behind the ‘Selfie with Daughter’ initiative, Sunil Jaglan of Bibipur village in Jind district of Haryana, said, “Today we celebrated ‘Selfie with Daughter’ day in Mewat, in which about 250 girls from ten villages participated.
Forms in this regard were given to them, and from Monday these forms will be made available in schools and colleges in this area. After getting all the applications by June 20 and after shortlisting them, a jury will select one girl after due diligence and the brand ambassador will be announced on June 28, the day on which Modi first talked about this initiative in his radio talk show, Mann Ki Baat. Then the campaign will continue throughout the country. The only criterion is that the girl should be able to hold forth on women’s issues and speak against triple talaq and wearing of the burqa.’’
“I will try that the girl who becomes the brand ambassador is able to meet the prime minister as it will give a boost to this campaign and increase the self-confidence of the girls,” he said.
Jaglan said that this campaign was not limited to having a photo with one’s daughter, but aimed at educating girls and giving them economic freedom, besides gender sensitization of society.
“As I have been working for the last three years in Mewat under the smart village programme, I have seen that the women here are talented but they have no platform to show their talent, and their education level is very low. Besides, the women here do not know about their rights,’’ he said.
He said that he had written a book on ‘Selfie with Daughter’ , which deals with issues that arise due to gender imbalance, and talks about Haryana, as youths in the state are forced to get brides from other states.
“On June 9, 2015, I started the ‘Selfie with Daughter’ campaign in Bibipur. Modi lauded my campaign and later appealed for its adoption by the masses. He even appreciated it while speaking at Wembley stadium in UK and while addressing CEOs in Silicon Valley in the US, whom he asked to take selfies with their daughters. After that I started receiving selfies on WhatsApp,” he said.