MADHYA PRADESH: For decades, the male kotwars (watchmen) have watched over their villages and duly informed them about crimes to the police.
In the villages of western Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district, however, it is the women who have assumed this role. Meet Vasudha Didis — an army of women informants, who are on a mission to alert the police about crimes against women, girls and children in their villages, just like the gram kotwars have been serving as trusted police informants.
As many as 470 out of the around 700 villages in Jhabua, which borders Gujarat, now have fearless and active women donning the role. Each of the Vasudha Didis keeps a tab on crimes committed against women and children.
This includes wrongs stemming out of social evils, such as branding women as witches, the evil of Dahej Dhapa (dowry), child marriages, the superstitious practice of Dagna (branding ailing infants with hot objects out of a false belief that it will cure them) and sale and consumption of illegal liquor. These crimes are particularly rampant in tribal areas of the state.
“Under this first-of-its-kind Vasudha Abhiyan, the Vasudha Didis have also been trained to alert the police machinery about the abduction of children and female foeticide, besides informing about any natural or manmade emergencies such as floods, earthquakes, epidemics or exigencies like snake bites or electrocution,” said Jhabua district police superintendent Agam Jain.
While the entire idea was mooted in September this year, and implemented only last month, after the assembly elections, it has already been put into practice in 470 villages. “In the last one month alone, we have had around 15 specific and reliable inputs from Vasudha Didis about illegal sale of liquor, physical assault on vulnerable people and domestic violence on women by close family members. In the past, such information either never reached us or came many days after the actual date of occurrence. Now the nearest police outposts are alerted on time. This is helping us to act on these matters and prevent them from snowballing into major law and order issues,” Jain added.
Interestingly, the entire idea was mooted in September during a sort of ‘chai par charcha’ between the SP-Jhabua and prominent citizens of the district, including a senior journalist, Chandrabhan Singh Bhadauria, who suggested training women on the lines of male village kotwars.
“We began the entire exercise with selection of women, who were voluntarily willing to become trusted police informants. Education was never a bar. All we wanted was that the Vasudha Didis should be active, fearless and cell phone-friendly, with good networking across their respective villages,” Jain said.
The selection of Vasudha Didis was followed by their training, which was largely undertaken by female cops from various police facilities — including from district police headquarters to the nearest police outpost.