The life of a homeless person is never easy. But for homeless women, it is especially hard. All too often, drug pushers, pimps, robbers and rapists prey on these vulnerable women.
While there, are laws in India saying that girls must be educated but are the laws really implemented?
Are girls safe in a nation, which boosts of worshiping female deities?
Breaking the conventional notion that the destitute are usually old, a new study has found that over 77% of homeless women in the national capital are young and in the productive age group.
Recent survey carried out by NGO Ashraya Adhikara Abhiyan (AAA) and the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), one of India’s leading mental hospitals, revealed that majority of the homeless women are in the age group of 16 to 45 years.
1. Nearly 70% of the women mentioned that they have no source of income while 19% accounted loss of their slum quarters as a major reason for their homelessness.
2. For 2.9% of women, homelessness is because of family disputes.
3. Rest of the women reported mental illness or has been deserted by their husbands.
The study further revealed that these women met their livelihood by working as contract laborers or by selling small items on footpaths.
The condition is so deplorable that one in every six women hover around religious places for food items.
Is there a way out?
Government agencies at all levels, nonprofit organizations and other groups must work in unison to come up with needed funding, expanding and improving programs to get more women out of the vicious cycle so that they may look upon their and their kids future.
Thus, what is required is a comprehensive national policy to deal with urban homelessness, the ultimate goal being to provide the basic need of shelter to all.
