Women want safe workplaces, women want safe public transport, women want an empathetic police force, women want gender-sensitisation campaigns in schools.
A charter of demands seeking systemic changes to make Bengal a safe place for women was unveiled by a civil society collective on Thursday.
A copy of the charter of demands has been emailed to chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her cabinet colleagues, representatives of the collective said at Press Club Kolkata.
The letter has urged the administration to focus on four key areas — safety at workplaces, police reforms, safe public transport and inclusion of legal awareness and gender sensitisation in the school curriculum.
“This is not a political platform. We are not campaigning for or against any political party. We don’t want anyone’s resignation. We want the administration to implement some long-term, systemic and institutional changes to make Bengal a safe place for women. We have an elected government. The chief minister is the administrative head of the government. That is why we have written to her,” said filmmaker Aparna Sen, one of the founders of Nagarik Chetana, the group behind the campaign.
The collective is made of citizens — united by “a deep concern for safety and dignity of women and trans-queer people” in Bengal — from different walks of life.
The letter sent to the chief minister — with copies marked to Kolkata Police commissioner Manoj Verma, minister of women and child development and social welfare Shashi Panja, transport minister Snehasish Chakraborty and education minister Bratya Basu — discusses each of the four demands in detail.
“The horrific incident at RG Kar Medical College has sent shockwaves through the state, bringing to light the urgent need for systemic changes in the way safety of women is addressed in Bengal,” the letter says.
“A period of five months has passed since the heinous incident at RG Kar but the demands that have been made via this letter still stand relevant as the condition of women in West Bengal is still precarious.”
The letter has been signed by 50 people. Among them are actor-filmmakers
Konkona Sensharma, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Anirban Bhattacharya and Kamaleshwar Mukherjee, former MP and bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar, environment activists Pradeep and Bonani Kakkar.
Rimjhim Sinha, a social science researcher who had given the clarion call to reclaim the night on August 14, is among the founders of the collective.
At the news conference, she said: “Safety of women at workplaces is non-negotiable and full implementation of the Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 must take place immediately.”
That would mean “mandatory audits to ensure all institutions comply with the establishment of internal complaints committees” (ICC) and “local complaints committees are established across the state”, she said.
Avik Saha of Jai Kisan Andolan, who is among the founders of the citizens’ campaign, stressed the need for the introduction of legal awareness and gender sensitisation as part of the school curriculum. “To fight violence against women at its roots, education must play a key role,” he said.
The panel of speakers was asked to comment on the “fake narratives around the RG Kar rape-and-murder” and the CBI probe into the case.
“We will not comment on a sub judice matter. But we want to make one thing clear. We are not going into a blame game over who handled the probe better. The political slugfest diverts the focus from the main issues. The RG Kar incident happened because of systemic flaws. We want to address those problems,” said Sen.
In the wake of the RG Kar incident, the Bengal government issued a set of 17 guidelines on women’s safety. The guidelines, which had called for minimising night shifts for women, drew sharp criticism.
During a hearing on the RG Kar issue, the Bengal government told the Supreme Court that it would remove two guidelines that recommended that women be “preferably” kept out of night shifts and their duty hours be capped at 12 hours.