Demolish Drugs Cartel For Safety Of Women In Himachal

Indu Patiyal

(The writer is based at Kullu)

There was a time when daughters in Himachal took more interest in fields and household chores after completing their formal education. Parents too had an opinion that educating boys is more important while teaching girls knitting, stitching and other arts could prove beneficial in her married life. A decade ago you must have seen matrimonials with wordings like required beautiful, homely girl. But the time has changed where life of a girl was confined to the boundaries of kitchen and home. Today girls are achieving success in almost all walks of life alike their male counterparts.

Where on one hand the sex ratio is satisfactory in Himachal Pradesh, the contribution of parents in educating girl child is also exemplary. As per health department, there are about 972 girls for every 1000 boys in Himachal Pradesh. This could happen because of strict measures taken by the government against female foeticide and awareness campaigns like ‘Beti bachao Beti Padhao’, Kishori Sanwal Yojana’, ‘Beti Hai Anmol’, ‘Laadli’ etc run at panchayat level. The dream of women empowerment could be achieved only by educating and strengthening our daughters. The better part here is that women are showing their competitive presence in almost every field because of economic upliftment. Prior to 2000, women served mostly in health and education sector in Himachal. But now they are serving in banking, police, army, railway, industries and companies too. In fact they are occupying the chairs of highest position in bureaucracy too. Divya Himachal in their endeavour to empower Himachalis have also provided numerous platforms to Himachali youth to showcase their talent. Talent competitions like Miss Himachal, Himachal ki Awaz, Dance Himachal Dance have opened new vistas of career opportunities for Himachali girls too with some of them entering the modelling and acting world. Preity Zinta and Kangana Ranaut have already proved their mettle in Bollywood. However the most important thing to make women safe now is to demolish spreading drugs business.

Hundreds of youth are entering into this business to become rich overnight thus pushing young generation to drugs addiction. Additional police staff is required to save future generation from drug menace, whereas police stations lack required strength. Women are facing domestic violence because of drugs problem and  feeling unsafe even on roads with rapes and other abusive incidents reported against them. No doubt, there are laws against drugs and violence, but our social structure makes them useless. The male dominated society needs to change its perception and should encourage and respect daughters equally so that they can bring laurels to the family, state and nation.

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