The struggle of college going girl students may apparently seem petty, but are quite grave – wearing jeans, applying lipstick, delaying marriage until after graduation, getting away with boyfriend blackmail, ignoring unwanted touches on the bus, not telling home because they would shut down college if harassed by a road romeo. These struggles take a lot of their energy and skill.
I While interacting with college girls it is strongly realized that it is crucial to take women’s issue more seriously, that we should move forward by supporting and uplifting each other
The concept of #DesiMeToo program was born out of interactions with college girls through which their problems started to emerge. In India, it is common knowledge that women face various forms of oppression. It includes violent abuse in the form of rape, assault, molestation, dowry, harassment by in-laws, passing obscene comments to girls while walking on the street, whistling, enduring unwanted touching by men during travel and in schools and colleges, body shaming, obscene messages etc.
In India there is some seriousness and awareness when people are talking about issues like rape and dowry, but we are not so serious about the various forms of molestation girls face every day. These atrocities are not even on our radar. While interacting with college girls, they said that girls are treated in a disgusting way by bus drivers, auto drivers, truck drivers, hotel waiters, college friends to even acquaintances and relatives. It was realized that how girls deal with sexual behaviour and obscenity in the society is the subject of research. Also, college girls also wanted to be able to talk freely about such topics. #DesiMeToo program was organized with the intention to present this horrible reality to the society. It included women from all social and economic levels, from school and college girls to a 45-year-old woman. In this program, the clothes worn by the girls on the day when they had to face various incidents of molestation, the description of the incident and the photographs of the girls with their names were exhibited. These ranged from a school uniform to a leggings kurta of a girl who worked on a weigh fork in a WCL mine, clothes of a five-year-old girl who was raped, and a sari of a 45-year-old woman. Except for a five-year-old girl, all other girls and women announced their names and displayed their photos along with dress. Not only this, the girls came to the platform and narrated their experiences. College students and relatives of some of the girls also shared their feelings and opinions. The girls who participated in the activity gave feedback that they felt very free and comfortable after sharing their experiences. After the catharsis they felt rejuvenated and confident to take up further challenges in life. Also, it was felt that the girls did not have the understanding of how to deal with such situations and the knowledge about the law and it was decided to take this direction of the further work. It was strongly felt that raising awareness was necessary especially among the youth. It was decided to organize an awareness workshop for that. #Desi Me Too was an experiment, it was an attempt to highlight the fact that just as celebrities in India face sexual harassment, so do ordinary girls.
#Desi Me Too can be said to be qualitative research. Before taking up the awareness programme, it felt necessary to check whether the findings from #DesiMeToo are universal. So, it was decided to conduct a survey called Sahsanvedana Survey.
