The teacher who makes a village learning centre possible is also the person who has to get home from it.
Sunita, twenty-five, taught at the Singahia learning centre, two kilometres from her village along a canal path with nobody on it.
At about 1:15 in the afternoon on 3 November, two men on a motorcycle followed her, then tried to rape her.
She fought them off with her hands and with stones. Her bangles broke and cut into her wrist.
She called her project coordinator, then went with a passer-by to Singahia. Villagers and the DEHAT–IIMPACT team located the two men, and the police arrested them at 3 pm.
Registering the case took eight and a half hours - four in the afternoon to half past midnight - and was completed only after DEHAT’s chief executive and the press became involved.
The case was registered under Indian Penal Code Sections 354B, 323, 504 and 506, with Section 3(1)(xi) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Sunita was honoured by Rukaiya Bano of the State Women’s Commission and received a SWAYAM award from the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Self-defence training is now part of the quarterly teacher training every centre instructor receives. That is the part of this that had to change, and did.
Registration of the case took eight and a half hours.
The People Who Deliver the Work Need Protecting Too
Every village learning centre depends on a woman who travels to it alone. Safe travel, self-defence training and an organisation that will escalate are part of the cost of the centre.