Hi Nilanjana,

You are absolutely right in highlighting the fact that, in a patriarchal society like us, we are indeed diminishing the idea of women empowerment irrespective of the social class we belong to. You are right in saying that for women to travel in dark hours, its unsafe because we made the society unsafe. Its absolutely true. Shortly we will be celebrating 70th Independence Day but to me,its true sense will be highlighted when women can travel anywhere at any point of time without any fear. But why its not happening? Where is the gap? Why even after 70 long years they dont feel safe travelling at night?

If we delve deep into the mess, we can find how we are blindfolded to any change on our mindset, how we give excuse of the age old traditions in justifying our apathy towards the female fraternity. Though GOI is promoting ‘Beti Bachao’ program, how many of us,the common Indians, actually feel proud when a girl is born still remains a question. How many people can accept the fact that married women should.choose their career in sports rather than being a housewife. Nowadays, we can find change in mindset of people but I bet, majority will not be accepting it by will. We are so engulfed in following the followed that our brains dont work out the changes, rather it discards it. Yes, Nilanjana, you are right, we need a revolution. We need to rethink on how we should view our other halves. The foundation of this change should be laid by us through every possible contribution. A small change can make a big difference.

However, coming to your point of the HR policy, let me mention the basic fundamental right guaranteed by Indian Constitution …Right to Equality..A section of the feminist population might say that there is no equality when women dont feel safe to roam at dark hours while men can. I truly agree with those learned folks but I want to know why are we letting the people who might be even sympathetic to this cause be overburdened just because he is a man and can be available 24 by 7. Arent we losing the strength of his ideology to his real life experience of apathy shown to him? Are we being fair to man like him while we say we should work upon a long term revolution? We arent. We are actually weakening the idea of empowerment by promoting this inequality because even if the man is an ardent supporter of women empowerment, his real life hardships might turn him against it.

Now coming to the solution part of it. How can we mitigate? Can we find a middle ground for both the sexes while working on long time goals. The answer is Yes!! Why cant our women initiate stuff to strengthen themselves?Why blame the environment and not have the freedom we wanted to relish? Why we want to upset our male colleagues while we can work as much as our hearts follow? Again, the same ideology applies. We need a change in mindset. We can have our daughters trained in martial art, boxing etc to protect themselves. We can have more women in police and armed forces. Now,the point is how many of women themselves would want to go for such areas.I bet, a lot will not venture on those lines. So, its again, close looped. Its easier to blame others and the society in general but it takes a lot of will to follow an untrodden path. Yes, we just need to take a small step and I am hopeful that we will do good in both short term and long term aspects