A working woman in Madhya Pradesh’s Itarsi town, Silvia Peter is familiar with the experience of feeling unsafe. Since 2017, when she co-fo...
A working woman in Madhya Pradesh’s Itarsi town, Silvia Peter is familiar with the experience of feeling unsafe. Since 2017, when she co-founded an organisation to educate women and children from Adivasi brick worker communities, she has received multiple threats – both open and veiled – from men who did not want her out in the field.
But on January 12, when she read reports about Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s plans for ensuring women’s safety in the state, Peter felt more angry than reassured. In addition to setting up panic buttons in public vehicles and an emergency distress helpline, Chouhan claimed that a system would be put in place where a woman moving out of her home for work would register herself at the local police station, and would be tracked for her safety.
Reports of this statement sparked immediate outrage on social media. While Peter echoed the views of many women online, she could not help but take it more personally.
“I have faced threats because of my work, but I will never register myself if the state government implements this,” said Peter, 33, the founder of Burning Candle, her non-profit organisation. “The CM seems to think that a woman who want safety should be collared...
