Thirty year-old Harita, Coordinator with the Mutually Aided Cooperative Society, Kaushigudda village, Nalagonda district, Andhra Pradesh, says, “The issue of domestic violence is serious and needs to be redressed. Women feel unable to handle it as their family circumstances overwhelm them. To help them out, we have set up compliant cells in 10 villages; these cells have ten members on board. We try to sort out the complaints at the village level so that the complications that ensure due to police complaints are minimised. Our efforts have resulted in domestic violence being seen as a crime. I am proud to say that in our organisation, no woman is subject to abuse at home.

I would like to recount a case that I handled. My neighbour’s husband was a highly suspicious man and would often falsely accuse his wife of infidelity. One day he beat her badly after hurling accusations at her. I intervened and asked his wife to move in with me. She did that and I threatened to report him to the police. That scared him and he has been behaving with respect towards her ever since. They, in fact, are quite happy together and have a baby now. My colleagues take up such cases as well and I think we have made rapid progress.”