The Kudumbasree Mission has prepared a crime map, marking out instances of harassment against women at the local body level, as part of its Nirbhaya project initiatives. The map, with information on such instances in 77 wards, will be released at the Kudumbasree’s anniversary celebrations in August.
A group of Kudumbasree volunteers met in the city recently to collate the information gathered from the 77 wards and panchayats that were considered for the initial phase of the project.
The mapping project will help form a comprehensive picture of crime in a specific area in each ward. The preparation for the mappings started at the neighbourhood-group level around two years ago. The mapping was done in two phases — issue mapping and crime spotting.
In the initial stage, women in all neighbourhood groups were asked to answer a detailed questionnaire on the kind of harassment they had faced in the past six months. This included details of the time and places in which such incidents occurred. The identity of the person filling the form was protected.
The incidents were colour-coded, depending on whether the incidents of harassment were physical, oral, or gestures. The information so gathered was super imposed onto the ward- and panchayat-level maps and later uploaded onto the crime mapping software.
After the mapping, a network of ward-level committee members, CDS members, gender resource persons, and field investigators will be formed as a defence mechanism against future crimes in the mapped localities. For the mapping work, around ten field investigators were appointed from each ward.
The map so prepared will be updated as per the meetings convened at the ward level every three or six month. An action plan will be prepared according to the frequency of incidents in a particular area. Awareness classes on defence mechanisms will be held at the neighbourhood group meetings. Support for legal proceedings, if required, will be made available for victims.
“This is a project that the Kudumbasree started even before the formation of the Nirbhaya project. Usually, such mapping is done by the Police Department and this is a first-of-its-kind initiative for the Kudumbasree. The report will be handed over to the Home Department next month. We are planning to replicate this mapping in every ward,” said Swapna George, executive committee member of Kudumbasree.
