Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Parents in the city are training their daughters to keep themselves safe and are keeping a close eye on their behaviour against the backdrop of a series of recent incidents of rape and sexual assault on minors. They talk with their kids and observe their behaviour after their return from school. They are trying to make the littles ones understand the difference between a good and a bad touch.
Some of them are even dropping and picking up their daughters instead of relying on school vans and buses. Artist Bandna Kumari who is looking for a school for her three-and-half-year old daughter, said, “I don’t care whether school is a well-known one or a two-room institution. I also don’t care whether my daughter learns something. I just want her to be safe.” Bandna is checking safety record of schools to pick one for her daughter and has already rejected many big names on that count.
“What is happening is terrifying. It makes me feel like vomiting. The staff of pre-primary schools should be such that the girls don’t come in contact with males,” she said. She also wants that feeds from CCTV cameras installed in schools should be streamed on parents’ mobile phones. Homemaker Pratibha Singh Baghel makes talks with her five-year-old daughter Gyanvi everyday after she is back from school. She drops her to school in her car and also brings her back. “I tell her about good and bad touch and I have already enrolled her in a karate class,” she says.
Gyanvi’s father Gajendra Singh Baghel, a businessman, is shocked by what is happening. “We also studied in schools. There was nothing like that then,” he said. Pratibha has also told her 14-year-old niece Saumya, who stays with her in a joint family, not to worry about passing and failing exams. “I counsel her to share everything with her parents. I have told her that even if someone threatens to fail her in an examination, she shouldn’t bother,” Pratibha adds.
Banker Chanda Rajput, a mother of a six-year-old girl, said situation was alarming. “I keep a keen eye on her to ensure that she is not unusually quiet or is not showing disinterest in activities like colouring and dancing, which she enjoys. It is sad that even boys are not safe,” said Chanda whose son is eight months old.
