Tuned Out: Launched After Nirbhaya, Helpline Fails Women

Unprecedented public outrage over the brutal Nirbhaya gangrape and murder in December 2012 forced the Delhi government into urgency. An action plan was created. Within 15 days, then Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit announced a helpline number ‘181’ to support women in distress. 

Run from the CM’s office at the time, the helpline was meant to support women survivors of violence, connecting them with authorities like the police, legal aid services, and hospitals. 

‍Governments are often quick to act in the face of public anger. The helpline, which emerged in response to this anger, was taken nationwide two years later by the Union government with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the helm.

‍Until then, sporadic helplines had run across the country either at state or city levels, which the Union claimed were plagued by operational issues and created confusion.

‍The government’s central helpline scheme, called the Universalisation of Women Helpline (WHL), was launched in April 2015. Picking a leaf from Delhi’s post-Nirbhaya helpline, this 24/7 dedicated women helpline was also coded 181.

Nearly a decade later, the WHL scheme has failed.

The Nirbhaya case forced governments to think about women’s safety. A slew of schemes were launched to ensure women receive support to fight violence and abuse. In this three-part series, The Reporters’ Collective analyses critical schemes to protect women. 
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We accessed exclusive government records and travelled across two states – Delhi and Haryana – to find that even after a decade these schemes, launched as initial steps, have failed to deliver on their promise of a safe and secure space for women. In the second part, we look behind the workings of the 181 women helpline.

The helpline was imagined as a support system, a single, reliable point of contact for women in distress. Now, it has been reduced to mere call lines that simply forward distress calls to state-run help centres, called One Stop Centres (OSCs), and the police, even though women often fear or hesitate to approach them.

But that’s not all. Official documents reveal that much has changed with the helpline.

It no longer collects feedback directly from women callers; instead, it receives updates from the police or OSCs. The helpline has also been stripped of its powers to follow up on a woman’s complaints or ensure that the police or other authorities provide proper help.

These responsibilities have now been shifted to the OSCs, without increasing their capacity or resources to handle additional workload from the helpline.

Further still, in an effort to cut costs, the Union government, which funds the scheme, brought the women and child helpline under one roof. New procedures were set for both helplines that mimic each other, without specific adaptations to cater to women’s needs.

Our reality check of the helpline, along with interviews with survivors and social workers, shows that the helpline fails to provide information on available services and schemes for women empowerment and safety, going against its own guidelines.

We sent detailed queries to the Union and the two state governments. While we have not heard from the Women and Child Development ministry, the Delhi government has only forwarded our queries to state officials.

Despite repeated reminders, the Haryana government did not respond to specific and detailed queries. Instead, it demanded that the journalist seek an appointment to meet unnamed and unspecified ‘higher authorities’ of the state government.

A Reality Check

On August 16, The Collective called the 181 Women Helpline in Delhi. Here’s what we found.

This reporter told the call responder that she was in a live-in relationship and wanted to know about the legal protections for women in such relationships.

“For this information, please talk to a legal counsellor, we only register cases of violence or harassment,” the responder said. When asked how to contact this legal counsel, she added, “You can go to DLSA in the Saket court,” without explaining that DLSA stands for District Legal Services Authority, a body providing free legal services to citizens.

After further requests for help, the responder offered to “Google” the DLSA’s number and provided it.

According to the 2016 scheme guidelines, the helpline responder should provide information about women’s protection laws, existing schemes and government services. If they don’t have that information, the responder can refer callers to relevant authorities.

“Before telling a woman whether they can help or ask her to seek help elsewhere, they should try and understand the kind of help she needs,” said Monika Tiwary, Coordinator and Counsellor at Shakti Shalini, an NGO supporting survivors of gender violence that also runs a helpline.

“In this case, the responder just heard the word ‘live-in’ and decided DLSA should handle it,” she added.

The scheme guidelines mandate that the WHL staff maintain a resource directory of all the services that women in distress might need.

Next, we posed another scenario: a woman living in South Delhi is regularly “beaten and forced to have sex (the way marital rape is often spoken of)” by her husband. She and her 10-year-old son no longer want to live with him but he refuses to leave. What should she do?

The responder suggested she could go to the family court for couple counselling or approach the women cell of the Delhi Police if she wanted to file a case of domestic violence. But, after learning she had a young child, the responder questioned how she would manage alone and take care of the child.  

After being told that the woman earns, the responder said, “But she will still need financial assistance, or alimony from the husband,” suggesting she should approach the family court.

In this instance, Tiwary acknowledged that the helpline did point the caller in the right direction. However, what was lacking was the key step of asking the survivor what specific help she needs.

“Ideally, they should first inform the woman of all the help they can provide, before referring her to other authorities. Here, the responder mentioned that a case can be registered through the helpline only after being asked, which is not good practice,” Tiwary said.

The survivor was informed but she remained unconvinced. She had already been through the helpline and police counselling, which closed the case without any resolution.

A Fundamental Shift

As per the scheme’s 2016 guidelines, the Women Helpline (WHL) staff at the state level comprised helpline managers, supervisors, call responders, tech support and other personnel. The helpline manager reported to the state’s Department of Women and Child Development.

Incoming calls were first directed to call responders, with cases escalated up the chain depending on the severity.

The helpline was designed not only to refer women to authorities like the police, hospitals, or legal services but also to follow up, ensuring that help reached them in time.

In cases where the police refused to register a woman’s complaint, the guidelines empowered helpline staff to reach out to the police authorities and ensure an FIR was filed. They were to be provided with a copy of the FIR. The helpline was authorised to follow up with other authorities responsible for aiding the aggrieved woman.

This changed after the Union government launched Mission Shakti in July 2022, repackaging and clubbing existing schemes for women welfare, including OSCs and the much-touted Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme, under one umbrella. 

In packaging the helpline under Mission Shakti, a quiet but fundamental change was made to the helpline services, away from public scrutiny. 

New Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) replaced the earlier guidelines. These SOPs were never shared in public, but they undermined the original intent of the helpline service. The Collective is now disclosing the SOPs to the public. 

The helpline was reduced to a mere call-forwarding centre, rather than an intervening support system for women in distress.

It would forward emergency calls to the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) – handled by the police – and to One Stop Centres. 

This, despite the helpline’s core purpose of assisting women as they navigate other authorities, especially the police. Reports of police apathy in dealing with women make such facilitation crucial.

“Government-run helplines are always overburdened. If you call 112 (ERSS) they’ll send a PCR van or an ambulance. They will just get you the emergency support without preparing you to receive that support,” said Shakti Shalini’s Tiwary.

“For many women, it is very difficult to talk to the police. There is fear and hesitancy. So, that support and assistance is needed,” she added.

After the calls are forwarded, instead of taking feedback from the woman as per the 2016 guidelines, the helpline now takes case updates from ERSS and OSCs.

The new SOPs also strip the helpline staff of the power to address grievances from women who are not properly assisted by the authorities they are referred to. This additional responsibility has been shifted to OSCs, without improving or increasing their capacity. The SOPs mention that a women helpline unit will be set up within OSCs, but this unit’s role and responsibilities are not defined in any guidelines of the OSC scheme.

In Part 1 of this series, we wrote about how OSCs have failed women, lacking both awareness and the quality of services provided. They were severely understaffed and suffered from funding delays.

Some tell-tale signs indicate the government is more focused on trimming its costs than improving the women helpline. 

The Union government ordered the Women Helpline service to run from the same location and use the same infrastructure as the Child Helpline service. While reducing expenditures can be practical, the weakening of the helpline’s services can be seen in the SOPs, which too were copy-pasted from the Child Helpline. 

Terms from the Child Helpline, such as “women in conflict with law” – a phrase with no legal definition – found their morphed way into the Women Helpline, mimicking the “child in conflict with law” terminology used for juveniles. We spoke to four lawyers who confirmed that the term does not appear in women safety laws.

The lack of thought behind the SOPs is clear in other parts as well. For instance, the document instructs the helpline to send any woman seeking “protection from abuse” directly to the police and inform OSCs about it.

“Protection from abuse” is a broad term, which could include a woman seeking information to address various forms of abuse – emotional, verbal, financial or physical – without necessarily wanting police intervention at that stage. 

Less than Satisfactory

The Union claims that since the launch of the helpline scheme in April 2015, it has received over 1.53 crore calls and assisted more than 76.02 lakh women nationwide. The confidential 2021 NITI Aayog study, however, highlights several issues, including in scheme’s monitoring and awareness.

All states except West Bengal have implemented the 181 women helpline scheme. In August 2024, the Union Women and Child Development Minister Annpurna Devi criticised the state for not implementing the scheme.

The study, mentioned in Part 1 of this series, across 12 state capitals found the scheme’s effectiveness as “average”, with fewer than 1 in 4 women aware of it. The study surveyed 3,048 women in the 12 locations.

But the Union government presented only half the picture in Parliament. It said that NITI Aayog’s evaluation found the relevance, efficiency, and sustainability of the scheme satisfactory. It skipped the rest.

Here’s what else the NITI Aayog study had to say about the helpline:

• Household survey found the awareness of WHL to be low at around 23.5%.
• The scheme’s fund utilisation remains dismal, with only 56% of allocations released to states in four years.
• Monitoring of indicators on the quality of service remains missing.

The study praised the helpline’s work during the Covid-19 lockdown and its “strong convergence” with services like the police, OSCs, and legal aid. But it had taken the government’s word on it, admitting that “data is not available on the number of calls referred by the WHL to OSCs and the other authorities such as police and health authorities.”

The government think tank’s evaluation recommended that “the effectiveness of the scheme be assessed on the quality of service provided” and not just numbers. 

Delayed by a Decade

One of the government’s main objectives was to integrate the helpline with OSCs to provide comprehensive support to women.

While what the government calls a successful integration (with the ERSS), the new SOPs suggest, the helpline will now merely pass the buck to other authorities, such as the OSCs, without any corresponding improvement in the centres.

In August 2024, a Ministry of Women and Child Development official revealed that while integration with ERSS was complete, only about 300 of the 786 operational OSCs were connected to the 181 helpline. We could not independently verify this.

“We receive case details from the women helpline on calls or WhatsApp and then we connect with the women,” Mohd Ashfak Ali, an OSC in-charge in Haryana’s Nuh told us in August.

The ministry official noted that complete integration was a work in progress. “With the helpline’s integration with OSCs, calls will be transferred online. The manual sharing of case details will not be needed,” the official added.

The integration of the 181 women helpline and OSC finds a mention in every successive OSC guideline since its launch in 2015. On the ground, however, this integration has largely been ineffective.

Initially, the Union government recommended using a software developed by a private trust and deployed by the Chhattisgarh government, which integrated the OSC and Women Helpline. The software was also used by Jammu and Kashmir, Meghalaya and Assam. 

“Instead of a referral system where calls are forwarded, we used a system that represented women in front of OSCs, police, lawyers or protection officers [defined in the Domestic Violence Act],” said Rajendra Kachroo, the founder of the Trust.

But, by September 2023, all states had done away with this software. 

Since 2016, the Union government maintained that one of its tech arms, the National Informatics Centre, was developing a software to integrate OSCs and the helpline. Then it moved the responsibility to yet another tech agency. 

Currently, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, is tasked with integrating the women helpline with OSCs and ERSS. Eight years down the line, the complete integration and deployment of software is yet to see the light of the day.

[This investigation is partially supported by the Appan Menon Memorial Trust Award to The Reporters' Collective.]