The Central Reserve Police Force will soon get its first all-woman unit to fight Maoists (also known as Naxalites), who themselves have a women’s unit. This is a natural progression of the rapidity with which women are being equated with men in roles that were traditionally marked for men only. Not only are women to brush shoulders with men in combat duties with the Indian Army but they will also soon be flying sorties for the Indian Air Force and also undertaking naval duties that were considered so tough as to justify gender singularity.
The roles being given to women now, as in the CRPF where they are expected to operate in the toughest conditions in which death in combat is more than a mere occupational hazard, go far beyond the breaking of the glass ceiling in air-conditioned offices of the chrome and glass environment of the modern world, which women have achieved in corporate India to a very large extent.
In the roles being envisa
ged by CRPF in active duty, it can be said that Indian women have truly arrived, and literally so with regard to the battle for gender equality. The first batch of over 550 women commandos have already received 44 weeks of extensive and rigorous training in the worst-affected regions of Bastar, in Chhattisgarh, and in Jharkhand. Their training included unarmed combat, jungle warfare, firing of smart weapons, etc and, significantly, they will be doing the same duties as their male counterparts.
There are about 15 districts, if not more, in what is known as the red corridor, which are under Naxalite control. The people in these villages in Maoist-controlled areas live in terror of the rebels, who reportedly indulge in extortion and human rights abuses, especially if they suspect that villagers have been police informers. To operate in such conditions would be the ultimate test of women in the equality test.
While women as the equal of men serve as an object lesson in modernity, it is not to be brushed aside that human rights violations are likely to take place within the forces as this is never to be ruled out in male-dominated societies. Women who have joined the rebel forces and later surrendered to the state have harrowing stories about the treatment meted out to them on the other side of the divide. It would be incumbent on the forces in which women are deployed to put in place a well-defined redressal mechanism to protect women commando forces against human rights and sexual abuse.
Many a time it is poor and exploited rural women who join these forces hoping for a better deal and they should not be doubly exploited, as in the case of the surrendered Maoist rebels. Women commandos in the CRPF make for an exciting development in this struggle for gender equality and one can look forward to hearing of their heroic exploits in the days to come.
