Excerpts from the Speech of Smt. Vimla Mehra

Now I want to share with you some information about how women are placed in positions of authority. If you need to bring about change in general, in society, in the Government or anywhere else, you need to have a position of authority.
In civil services representation of women is 18%, in IAS 8%, in the Indian Police Service, it is only around 8%. In Foreign Service, we have more women - 14%; in armed forces, it is just 2.4%. In judicial services particularly the High court we have 5.8% and in the legislatures and Parliament, we have 11% women.

Now what is the social scenario open to us? Everything, all the laws and regulations are in the favour of men and against women. It is very difficult to work in this environment where every decision is taken by men for themselves and the rights and issues of women are not taken very seriously.

We have property rights only on paper. Practically, it is not available to women and we all know that reservation for women in parliament is still pending for so many years and this happens as it’s a man’s world.

Not only this, women coming out of their. homes have to sail through opposites all their life.

Not only this, women also face safety and security issues. You can’t go out at night, no freedom to wear what you want to and say what you want to say. Therefore there are so many limitations that limit our freedom as well as our growth.

What are the options for us? Options are many. First and foremost is empowerment of women. By empowerment, I mean, education. The next is financial independence. If you earn enough and can stand on your own feet, only then can you take decisions otherwise someone else is making decisions for you. So it is important to empower women and make them stand on their own feet and earn their livelihood so that they become decision makers also.

We have to change our society’s attitude towards us. Why do we ask? Why don’t we just assume authority naturally as we do at home? 

The other important thing that I feel always is , we have to be inclusive and we have to include men in our movement towards achieving whatever we want to do. We must invite men, work with them and move with them because, All sections of the society have to work together.

Now I will take you to my Tihar prisons because I love my prison and I love the inmates there. You can understand the magnitude of the work that we do. we presently have close to 14000 people in the Tihar prisons. I think love, affection, care and sensitivity are very necessary qualities that all of us have and my job of custody of inmates includes people who are negative, agitated, frustrated, penalized and separated from their families as they are law breakers. So to take custody of such people is a challenge. I feel like a guardian of the big family of inmates that I have as Director General of Prisons, I have assumed the responsibility of a guardian.When they realized that they are being heard, they are happy. I do try to address as many of their grievances as possible within the limitations of the law.

The first casualty when a person comes in the jail other than the social stigma is their self- respect. I also believe that every person is creative in some way or the other. So when they start doing something creative and earning, it restores their self-respect. The other experience that I have had is that spirituality enforces and enhances creativity. I have observed that when we are creative, they become calm and are able to do their job better and in a more creative way. All the activities inside the jail are carried out by the inmates themselves.We pay lot of attention to literacy programs. 4 years ago, 40% of the entering inmates were illiterate.. Today the status is that only 1 or 2% of the inmates are illiterate, We have support from Indra Gandhi National Open University and you will be happy to know that we had 4 MBAs who passed out from Tihar prison last year
We also have productive activities in the prisons to keep the inmates busy and use their time properly.The productive activities are carpentry, weaving, tailoring, making chemicals (finoil, etc.), paper, spices, soaps, sweets, blankets and the product range also includes furniture, handloom and textiles, mustard oil, finoil, handmade paper products, toiletry products and spices, bakery.
I will give you a brief of what jail administration really is. In the jails, we focus on 3 Rs i.e Reformation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration programs. We also give a lot of importance to administrative and environment concerns.People can be involved in sports activities, music, and meditation. Every jail has a play area, music room, meditation room, painting room, library where they can go and study. Every jail also has vocational training programs where they can go and work for wages like in a factory.

Delhi government has approved of our jail being an open jail wherein inmates will stay within the jail at night and during the day will go and work outside.
So the lesson that I have learnt in one and half years of my jail experience is we have to be natural and make others also natural, calm and collected so that it is a win win situation for them, for me and all of us.
We had a study by psychiatry department of our jail. They studied 40 inmates for substance abuse and 40 inmates for depression and anxiety. They were then asked to do the Sudarshan Kriya and after 6 weeks of Sudarshan Kriya, the anger and anxiety of both groups had reduced and many positive results were observed in terms of reduction of the drug usage as well as side effects of the drugs. This study will be released in medical journals in the next couple of months.