And we also wanted to document the kind of statements that women were making which were going to court, and also what was happening in court. In that sense, there was qualitative data, and there were about fifteen cases which we took from a police station. Fortunately, we got permission to look at the police records since we approached them as researchers. However, we did not get access to court records - so our research was hinged on the police records, which obviously were in Marathi.
Indira was also involved with us at the time, and that is when the conversation on the Domestic Violence Act – what should be done, and how – started. Around 1999, we also started the work of institutionalising the special cells – it couldn’t just remain the TISS Special Cell since we were already working with three police stations in Bombay at that time – at the head office, at the Dadar Police Station in the middle of the city (after the police commissioner told us that we should work in a non-elite area and see what the city is like), and later at a western suburb.
We saw that social intervention was working. Soon we were talking with UNIFEM and Ford Foundation as well. At that time, Mallika Dutt, who was with the Ford Foundation, was also working on police reforms and she saw the work of the special cells as part of a police reforms project. We knew that we could not take international funding since our goal was to push the government to institutionalise the Special Cells and the government would not take international funds. So Mallika and Ford Foundation basically gave the funds to UNIFEM, which was a UN entity, which could then transfer the funds to the government. Meanwhile, we were also working on police training.
Around 2000, Indira and I went to the US to present our findings, and understand how domestic violent related systems worked in the US. After completing the presentations in Washington, we met several activists, justice organisations and police officials in New York. This is how we began not only working on the law, but thinking about what could be there in the law.
The Special Cell was an important learning point for us to understand that intervention could work. It was the first multi-agency coordinated response in the country to domestic violence.
The feminist social practice that we were already working with grew and developed into what became the Special Cell. From the beginning, and till today, however, we still say that this is ‘pro-women’ work, because the moment you use the term ‘feminist’, there is immediate suspicion.
Asmita Basu: I wanted to ask you – what is feminist practice really? We use words like ‘intersectional’, ‘multi-agency’, ‘accompaniment’ and such, but what was it in practice?
Anjali Dave: One day, Sharmila Joshi, who was a senior journalist, came for an interview, and she asked me if I was a feminist. This was 1984. I just told her, ‘Listen, I don’t know enough about feminism, so let me not say that I am a feminist’.
When I use the word ‘feminist’, I think, do people around us understand what it is that we are working for? The essential part is that it is our fight to say we are human beings, and we will need to be treated with dignity. That is what my liberal understanding has been, and more and more schools of thoughts have added a lens to sharpen our understanding further.
Beyond the differences that civil society has in terms of our economic philosophies, politics and understanding of impact, it is essentially about human living and the pursuit for everyone to be treated with respect and dignity, which is why I did not want to be boxed into public imagination as a feminist solely.
The Special Cell was an important learning point for us to understand that intervention could work.
Asmita Basu: What do you think about the role of counseling?
Anjali Dave: You tend to use the word counselling, and I tend to use the word social work intervention. We weren’t just telling women to do the right thing, to behave, to change their behavior, their expectations, get everybody to join them and respect them. We were also listening to what the women wanted, how they wanted. Some women wanted marriage, some did not, some wanted relationships, some wanted divorce, some wanted to have multiple partners. It didn’t matter what they wanted.
We were also working with police – doing training, conducting research and looking at various systems that were allowing women to be part of justice delivery spaces. Thus, social work intervention is not only at the individual level, but works at multiple levels - with groups, with large communities, with systems. For me, if we continue to see the work of the Special Cell as counselling alone, I think that would be reductionist. We were constantly doing collaborative work, engaged in negotiations. Counselling is just one of the things that we do.
‘Domestic Violence needs a renewed political commitment’: Sanjoy Ghose, Nilima Dutta and Ravindra S. Garia on 20 years of the DV Act
Asmita Basu: Keeping in mind this broad understanding of social work, how was the idea of ‘Protection Officer’ (‘PO’) envisaged?
Anjali Dave: If you can recall, we didn’t start with the idea of a PO, but came across it in the middle when the idea of a PO came up during one of our meetings or presentations. We had already discussed the idea of a service provider – so a PO was to be similarly officially recognised in spaces, would have similar ideological positions, similar training and qualifications. The work could be of an overwhelming nature and thus training was essential to understand how to navigate the space.
Even though I had the reputation of being an activist, I had certain qualifications because of which I could navigate the space.
In a system, you cannot impose on anyone that there is a particular way we need you to think. We’ve all learned that is not going to work.
The court, the law, and the judiciary have been unable to absorb, integrate POs into their system.
Asmita Basu: To what extent do you think this broad idea of social work practice got reflected in the Protection Officer's role and institutionalised by the law?
Anjali Dave: Unfortunately, not enough. Today, qualifications of the POs are left entirely upon the state government to decide. Since qualifications have been deprioritised, today several lawyers are engaged as POs, and they only perceive situations through a legal lens. They are not trained to talk to people beyond the legal space. So the whole issue of what should be the qualifications of POs has suffered.
For instance, in Maharashtra, there are legal officers, who tell you about the law, and Protection Officers, who can be anybody. These POs are recruited through the Maharashtra Public Service Commission – hence the recruited individuals are also of a certain way since they have come through a political process.
The other big challenge is the bridge to courts. In many cases, magistrates didn't even know there was an outreach officer for their court.
The court, the law, and the judiciary have been unable to absorb, integrate POs into their system. We've had service providers from day one. Hardly any data shows courts calling service providers, even when they've referred cases to them.
So a big bridge that has continued to exist is this dependence on the law. We've not been able to nurture a strong social infrastructure. The Service Provider and the PO were part of this social infrastructure that we created for the PWDVA, but they have not been harnessed into the kind of work you need to do on domestic violence issues.
Asmita Basu: I think the Protection Officer concept was built on the Commissioner of Court model, where commissioners do investigations. The Protection Officer's role was divided into before, during and after litigation. Given that there hasn't been an uptake, was it because you were trying to integrate the discipline of social work into the system? What worked in the Special Cells that didn't work for the Act?
Anjali Dave: First and foremost, qualifications. I'm not saying social work is the cure of all ills. What I'm saying is, having people from a sound mix of backgrounds from sociology, psychology, any of the humanities qualifications which teach you to deal with social realities, that hasn't happened.
Second is ongoing training and supervision. We put the POs under the Women and Child Department (WCD), not the law department. So there's departmental rivalry and bureaucratic processes. We didn't spend enough time thinking through what it would mean for those people to navigate that environment. The WCD officer they report to is not by law, it's an administrative position, while the protection officer is a legal position. There's that tension.
In Maharashtra atleast, the POs are appointed under the law. Unless the law changes, they're there. They're responsible to an administrative officer but supposed to be working with the law and the court. This alignment has yet to happen.
There may be five or seven POs in an office, but they have not come together to advocate with the judiciary to say our presence, our importance matters. Nobody's fighting for it as a collective force.
One of the most significant things we achieved with the PWDVA was to recognize the work of women's organizations in the larger legal system.
Asmita Basu: Multi-agency coordination hasn't happened.
Anjali Dave: It hasn't happened because there's nobody to lead it. You need coordinators, supervisors, somebody to argue your cases.
TISS did a research where they sat through magistrate courts for months observing domestic violence cases, and how the judiciary responded. It was not a very encouraging situation. We did extensive research on Section 498A cases in four districts in Rajasthan. We found that there's no communication between the magistrate’s court, family court and the dowry court. Nobody talks to anybody and the woman is dropped in an enormous ocean of pain. Cases could have gone back to the family court, been referred to a PWDVA court or to an NGO. However, the magistrate just says that there's no case and drops it. This integration hasn't happened.
“Conversation must shift from ‘misuse’ to the ‘lack of use’ of the law”: Ruth Manorama, Anuradha Kapoor and Sheba George on the long, difficult campaign for the Domestic Violence Act
