Active bystander: The art of intervention

An NGO in Bengaluru is training street vendors, bus conductors, auto drivers, and shopkeepers to step in when women are harassed in public spaces. DH journalist Barkha Kumari follows them on a recruitment drive.

The cake was cut, pieces were shared, and the party started dispersing. “You stay back,” the birthday boy told one of the girls, standing on a footpath outside their college in Jayanagar, Bengaluru. “I like you,” he said.

She said she liked him as a friend, and nothing more. “You can’t say ‘no’,” the boy insisted. “Or I will throw this on you,” he said, reaching inside his pocket and holding up a bottle of lethal acid. “Aye!” Lokeshwari, a BBMP pourakarmika, screamed at him. Lokeshwari had been observing the noisy group. She had her earphones on but was playing no music. She was working her broomstick and keeping an eye out. “You leave now or I will call the police,” Lokeshwari yelled. A citizen living nearby trooped in to support her. The boy left. The girl’s parents were informed, and she was taken home safely.

In a residential colony in Jayanagar, Brunda outwitted a stalker. She irons clothes in the basement of an apartment. She asked a domestic worker who was being stalked to sit next to her cart. The man arrived. Brunda could see him riding up and down the lane on his motorbike. She lashed out at him: “I know what you are up to. I know the corporator well. I will call him.” The man rode away.

A BMTC bus was heading to the depot in Kengeri. Its conductor Ramesh and driver Suresh (names changed) noticed a boy harassing a girl at a bus stop. They offered to drop the girl to the next bus stop. While the bus she wanted to board was different, she accepted the ride because she was feeling unsafe.

Do the dare

Lokeshwari, Brunda, Ramesh and Suresh are active bystanders — people who can recognise a potentially harmful situation and intervene before it escalates.

“Bystander action means that somebody has got your back. That your safety is not your responsibility alone. Others are responsible too,” says Priya Varadarajan, founder-trustee of Durga.

The NGO, located in Jayanagar, is making active bystanders of common folk so that public spaces are safe for women. They are training flower sellers, tender coconut vendors, bus, auto and cab drivers, pourakarmikas, security guards, shopkeepers and even the traffic police.

They call this initiative ‘Durgas Are Real-Heroes Everywhere’ or simply DARE. It involves 21 days of free training and follow-up calls. I shadowed the team to know more.

Durga's team along with staff of a shop after they consent to being active bystanders.

Scouting for heroes

It was a muggy Saturday afternoon. Two social work students interning with Durga stood near a corner shop in Banashankari. They had to talk to the shopkeeper to see if he would sign up for the active bystander training. But the man did not notice them, his view obscured by a curtain of shampoo sachets and spice packets. Their senior, programme co-ordinator Thejaswini Suresh, took a deep breath and stepped in. She took out a barfi from a jar at the shop counter and asked the man ‘How much?’ The amount was settled. “I am from an NGO. Can I please speak to you?” she began her pitch. The man was talking on the phone with one hand and scribbling on paper with another. He nodded casually.

“If a woman is in trouble in front of your shop, will you help?” “What will you do?” “How will you ensure your own safety?” Thejaswini asked in quick succession, shouting over the songs blasting from autos in the bylane. The man seemed well-meaning but he had two customers waiting. “Kelsa ide (I have work),” he said, declining the training offer. “I don’t want any certificate. I will do what I can. Recently, I helped a woman when a man hit her two-wheeler and fled,” he said. “Sir, you are already a hero,” a smiling Thejaswini made one last attempt to change his mind. He would not budge.

Their next meeting was with an autorickshaw drivers’ union, a stone’s throw from the shop. The union leader was a woman. Thejaswini, her colleague Pushpa, two interns and I were ushered into the office, adorned with decals of Buddha and a galloping horse. The agenda was to rope in auto drivers for the group training. The leader did not mind the idea but the logistics concerned her. Would auto drivers put their work on hold for three hours at a time?

Auto drivers after completion of the cohort-based active bystander training.

“Would it improve the image of the auto driver community?” her male colleague, seated next to her, wanted to know. “That auto driver was misunderstood,” he said, referring to the recent Bengaluru incident in which a driver was arrested for allegedly slapping a woman who cancelled his ride. Thejaswini drew his attention to rape-murder incidents in Delhi and Kolkata and said the drivers would learn new skills to help the public. They will also get certificates, emblazoned with ‘Dare to Care’. The union promised to think about the proposal.

We then made a dash to a shopping complex in Banashankari and split into two groups. Besides seeking cohorts, the NGO also identifies individuals for training.

It was 4 pm. The crowd was thin. At a lingerie shop, we approached a female attendant who was wiping the counter. She agreed to become an active bystander. Our next stop was a milk booth. A male staffer excused himself, saying the complex is safe. Thejaswini wrote the NGO’s helpline number (90082 12828) on a chit and gave it to him, saying, “Share this with women in distress. They can call us for help.”

Next, we met a youngster and a middle-aged man at an accessories shop. “We hear about harassment only in the media,” they said initially, but came around to volunteer.

We spent a long time at a dress material shop. “Where are women safe? Look at the fridge case,” one of the three female attendants rued, referring to the gruesome murder of a woman in Bengaluru in September. A man craned his neck from behind a stack of clothes. We didn’t know he was around. “Did you listen to everything?” Thejaswini asked. He nodded and suggested that the government should allow everybody to carry “guns that give electric shock” for public safety. Everybody in the shop signed up. 

A man selling kurtas next door was also enrolled. Not too long ago, he had helped a woman walking back from work past midnight in Koramangala. A few men were tailing her.

An hour later, our group had more sign-ups than the other. We had 19 in all. We treated ourselves to gol-gappas before calling it a day.

Shifting focus

Why would somebody go from being a mute spectator to an active bystander? A “safer and stress-free” environment may attract more business than a shady one, Priya explains why street vendors could be interested. Others do it for the women in their lives. A BMTC staffer spoke about a colleague’s daughter who was sexually harassed by her school teacher.

“Convincing men takes more time. They say ‘The general perception is that we are harassers’,” Monika Rajashekar, chief people officer at the NGO, told me over a call later. “But women know what harassment feels like and want to know how they can deter it,” she continued. Others, like female auto drivers, seek an equal playing field to ply at night.

Prioritise the survivor 

I witnessed a preliminary training session at the BMTC bus depot in Yeshwanthpur next week. It did not go as programme facilitator Keerthi Shree would have hoped. Just two days ago, a BMTC conductor was stabbed by a commuter on a bus. And bus drivers and conductors, who had assembled in the changing-and-rest hall, were angry. “People could have held the man. But they ran away. Why should we help them?” said one.

Their complaint was that citizens don’t respect them. “You are just a conductor. Stick to your job” is a refrain commonly thrown at them when they try to look after women or senior citizens.

Keerthi empathised with their struggles but turned the conversation on its head. “If you were a commuter, what would you have done (during the stabbing incident)?” she asked. The room fell silent and Keerthi gave no solutions. 

Up next was a role-play exercise. The scene was set inside a moving bus. The ‘man’ was nudging the ‘woman’ on her shoulder. “How will you intervene?” she asked the house. “We’ll go, warn the man,” came multiple responses. “I will speak to the woman,” one said, scoring Keerthi’s approval. Besides comforting the survivor, the second intervention sends out a message to other women that somebody’s looking out for them.

Four strategies

There are no cookie-cutter solutions to bystander action, I learnt. They can vary from situation to situation and person to person. The NGO has summed up four strategies in their ‘DARE Toolkit’. Monika explained:

Distract: It is a subtle way to interrupt a situation. If you see a man leering at a woman, ask the woman ‘What’s the time?’ or loop the man in a false story like ‘Are you Nikhil’s cousin?’.

Address: If you want to send a stronger message, ask the woman ‘Are you okay?’ or warn the harasser to stop what he is doing.

Rally: ‘Let’s go and check what is happening’ you may mobilise others.

Extend (support): You can stand next to the woman till the harasser leaves, or book her a cab to a place she would feel safe to go to.

“It’s also fine if you don’t intervene today. Maybe another day,” Priya told me about coping with ‘bystander guilt’. Her words were liberating, also signalling that if I can’t help, maybe others will. “But if a person you are trying to help asks you to leave repeatedly, leave,” Priya said, defining where they draw the line.

Training sessions are built aroud drama, game and dialogue.

Snake prank

The training is designed to challenge gender stereotypes, unlearn gender biases, build empathy and trust, and imagine an equal world through drama, games, and dialogue. The Theatre of the Oppressed is used extensively. Here, some participants enact real-life struggles. And instead of simply watching, other participants, playing the crowd, suggest changes to that story, bouncing off ideas and building on one another’s solutions. On a subsequent visit, Thejaswini recounted what usually unfolds.   

“I will start singing like a mad lady to irritate the harasser,” said a female street vendor. “I will chant ‘Scale, scale, scale…’ while pointing a measuring scale at him,” went a woman shopkeeper. “If the situation is unfolding inside my auto, I will stop my auto and not go further,” suggested a male auto driver. ‘Haavu ide (There’s a snake here), I will prank the harasser,” came a response. “‘I have a question, sir,’ I will say if a teacher is making a girl student uncomfortable in a class,” another ideated. 

Presence of mind can go a long way. Thejaswini cited a real case study: “When a man flashed at a BBMP pourakarmika, she started sweeping backwards until she reached her colleague. Realising what was happening, the other woman held up the broomstick and warned the man, ‘Come, talk to me’.” There is strength in numbers. The man scampered away.

The need to intervene comes from the awareness that something is possibly off and participants are asked to read the body language. But it’s possible to misread a situation and it can get embarrassing sometimes.

“I saw a girl sitting by a lake, surrounded by two boys. ‘Is there a problem?’ I intervened. ‘Yes, there is a problem. She is two-timing us,’ one boy replied,” Priya recalled.

They are also told how social conditioning prevents women from standing up for themselves but why they must. Facilitator Likhitha Shetty spoke about a pourakarmika they had trained. “When she tried to save her crying infant from her husband’s wrath, he took her by her throat and pushed her against the wall. She bit his hand until it bled. He stormed off instead of striking back. She told me, “How long could I put up with his terror?’” Likhitha shared.

Playing a woman who is judged by her clothes gives a man some perspective on how an oppressee feels. And playing an oppressor brings one face to face with the shame that comes from being viewed as one.

Change begins at home and these sessions have had a far-reaching impact on the participants.

“During the graduation ceremony, a BMTC staffer shared how he is empowering his 10-year-old daughter to reclaim public space. He gave her Rs 20 and sent her to a shop to buy curd for the first time,” Thejaswini shared.

“A pourakarmika who wanted to marry off her daughter at 18, now wants the girl to prioritise her studies and independence,” Monika added.  

Research is on

What’s the guarantee that bystander action can stop the groping and catcalling of women? Will harassers stop physically abusing and bullying women once active bystanders intervene? They may go elsewhere, prey on others.

Here is Priya’s take: “These are not hardened criminals who plan things. Most are either opportunistic men who get a kick out of touching women inappropriately or men who think it is okay to beat up women. When they are called out or their plans are thwarted, they feel ashamed. They realise they are being watched. They may feel the need to correct their ways. Because, everybody wants to belong positively, at home, in office, on the bus they take.”

The NGO has groomed about 8,000 active bystanders in Bengaluru since 2015 and aims to train 6,000 more by next year, “in all police station limits”. Behavioural scientists are studying their training module, so the NGO can devise something like a Standard Operating Procedure to train active bystanders faster.

Until then, these active bystanders are helping distressed women in small but significant ways by, say, offering a glass of water to sheltering them in their shops. “By the way, that ‘iron lady’ knew the corporator only by his name!” Monika revealed.

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