Women now have a special tool to secure themselves. And that tool is just a click away. Whypoll, a part of the social democracy foundation has worked on a reporting tool for women who are harassed across the country.
On September 30, it launched a campaign for women’s safety called ‘Fight Back’ [fB] which registers complaints about harassment. A comprehensive website, www.whypoll.org, helps the user contact central ministers and member of parliament in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
Whypoll also launched a mobile application with the logo [fB] that works for women’s safety with the help of CanvasM, a Tech Mahindra company.
It will be functional in the next quarter and will be available for all urban women who live in the capital and own a smart phone. This application will have to be downloaded with bearing a marginal cost. The user will have to sign up and create a log-in id and password to use it. Once it is installed in the smart phone, it can be effectively used by pressing the button start. This essentially would start tracing the journey from the moment it is pressed till the time it is stopped. So a woman can start the tracking from the time she leaves her office at night till she reaches home.
And incase she is sensing some danger on her way, she can press the panic button available on the application. With this her location and the time at which she pressed the button will be tracked with the help of a back server. This information will be sent as a SOS message to the family or friend, whose information is fed in the application. This SOS message will immediately intimate them about her information and tell them that she is danger.
If someone works in one city and her family is another city, the application offers another feature where social networking websites can be used for rescue. So the emergency message of the location and time will be posted on the facebook wall or twitter account of the user and will let friends and acquaintances know about danger.
Himol Sengupta, founder member of Whypoll said, “When you are in trouble, what do you do call up 100. But does that help? With using fB it will let your near and dear ones know that you need help and will come to your rescue at once.”
Not only this, Webpoll states that places like Dhaula Kuan, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, Sarita Vihar, Outer Circle Connaught Place are more than just posh areas. They are among the 100 most unsafe places of Delhi. With the help of this data, an unsafe map of Delhi is being composed which helps locate areas even roads that are not safe in the capital.
Atul Kunwar, president, global operations, Mahindra Satyam said, “What will happen with the map is that the authority will have to be more vigilant in those areas which will eventually help improve safety issues there. The time has come when we combat social issues with technology. We have seen the Delhi Police and the Delhi traffic police come on facebook. Slowly they will come on fB too.”