As a Woman Takes Charge of a Haryana Police Station, Debate Over Tokenism

Gurgaon: Inspector Umesh Bala is an odd one out in the Haryana police force. Not only does she have a male sounding name, she is also occupying what has traditionally been seen as a very male dominated post - a Station House Officer (SHO). Her appointment as the SHO of the newly set up All Women Police Station in Gurgaon's Sector 51 reeks of tokenism, say activists, a charge vehemently denied by both Umesh Bala and her boss, Gurgaon Police Commissioner Navdeep Virk.

"Umesh Bala became SHO here because the men in regular Haryana police stations would have never accepted a woman as their superior," says Jagmati Sangwan, an activist who has worked in Haryana for a long time. "The word is that all those women who need to be accommodated in their promotions will be sent here," she adds.
 The attitude in regular police stations she refers to in Haryana, seems to fit in a state with one of the poorest sex ratios in the country, where khap panchayats often give out anti-women diktats and there were 8,974 crimes recorded against women last year.

The skew in the sex ratio and the image that comes with it was among the reasons that Haryana launched an all-out drive over the past weekend, perhaps as a Raksha Bandhan gift, to have an all-women police station in each of the state's 21 districts.

"I agree that there is a problem and we do have less than 6 per cent women in posts like SHOs," says Commissioner Virk. "But it would be wrong to say Haryana police will not accept a woman in-charge," he claims.

"But that's exactly what our study shows," refutes Devika Prasad of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), which brought out a report on the subject earlier this month. "From our study of Kerala, and what Parliamentary panels also found was that separate police stations only lead to sidelining women," says Ms Prasad.

But neither the criticism nor the skewed statistics have dampened the enthusiasm of Inspector Umesh Bala or her team of 35 women personnel. "Fifty women have come to me since Saturday to ask for advice. We can help all," she says.

Their first case was an 18-year-old, who complained of a man harassing her with obscene messages and morphed photos. "She felt free sharing evidence with us. She knows it is safe. This wouldn't happen in regular stations," says Umesh Bala.