The pandemic saw a huge increase in distress calls to women’s helplines as domestic violence peaked due to prolonged, enforced proximity between abusers and the women at home. Times of India reported in April 2020 that in Bengaluru, calls about domestic violence went up from 10 a day to 25 a day: an increase of 150%. It is in this context that many are viewing the state government’s decision to shut down Santwana Kendras – which are decentralised counselling centres for women in crisis and abusive situations – run by local NGOs and supported by the Department of Women and Child Development as particularly detrimental to women in need. To register their opposition to this move, on September 6, around 100 people including staffers employed at the Kendras, NGO workers, concerned women, and activists protested at Freedom Park in Bengaluru.
Santwana Kendras are in 194 locations including district and taluk towns, and often serve as the first line of response for women by offering counselling services and support to women who need a respite from a violent or toxic domestic situation. Santwana Kendras were started in 2001, and at the time, social workers used to be paid just Rs 2,000 as a salary. The amount has increased now, but only to an inadequate Rs 10,000. The centres have modest annual budgets of Rs 6 lakh.
These Kendras are distinct from the Swadhar Kendras which are also run by NGOs with support from the state government. Swadhar Kendra facilities permit women to stay anywhere from six months to six years, even take up job-oriented vocational training, and have a different mandate from the Santwana Kendras which are essentially crisis centres for women. These are also different from one-stop Sakhi centres that are set up using the Nirbhaya Fund.
In October 2020, TNIE reported that the Karnataka government was going was likely to close 187 Santwana Kendras in the state due to lack of funds. In April this year, the government issued a circular shutting down 71 Santwana Kendras, many of them located in places with high incidence of violence against women, like Bidar, Belgaum, Hassan, and Kolar. Several of the centres located in Bengaluru Urban have also been ordered to close down. This has been received with dismay by the affected women as well as NGOs, and the 300 staff employed at these centres, who have been petitioning the government since May this year to reverse the order.
The reason for the closure was that “there would be duplication of schemes.” The reference is to the ongoing setting up of the one-stop Sakhi centres, funded by the Union government, in every district. However, this reasoning doesn’t take into account that Santwana Kendras function at taluk level and are much more accessible to the common woman in distress.
“One-stop Sakhi centres set up using Nirbhaya Fund are located within district hospitals, and essentially address physical violence and rape, which are medico-legal, criminal cases. But the Santwana Kendras, on the other hand, are able to address broken family relationships by counselling the parents, the couples, which is not at all part of the mandate of the Sakhi centres. Who will take up this important work?” asks Isabella Xavier, founder of Sadhana Society for Women’s and Children’s Welfare and Human Rights, Dharwad, who has been spearheading the struggle.
Anuradha, Director of the Department of Women and Child Development, also arrived at the protest site in the afternoon of September 6, and met the protesters. “How is it, madam, that the government has been refusing our demand and saying that Rs 4 crore are being wasted due to duplication of schemes?” the protesters asked her. Rs 4.26 crore is the amount that the state government hopes to ‘save’ by shutting down the 71 Santwana Kendras.
Anuradha clarified that the order wasn’t categorical and was in fact an open-ended one. “If any Zilla Panchayat Commissioner writes to say that this centre is necessary, I will at once see that it is revived,” she said. But the workers said that as soon as the circular was received, the commissioners immediately asked them to close down. Anuradha said that the objection had been raised by the Finance Department in this case. So, she would immediately take their memorandum and write to the secretary and the minister of the department on the issues.