T’puram: As Kerala heads towards another assembly elections, women’s safety, a recurring governance priority, has once again returned to limelight.Even as the state expanded visible policing initiatives such as Pink Patrol in recent years, reported cases of eve teasing have more than doubled — from 442 in 2020 to 944 in 2025. The increase raises questions about whether the preventive safety framework promised by the govt has fully taken shape on the ground.Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan informed the assembly in 2021 that Kerala would move beyond reactive policing to introduce a structured preventive mechanism to address violence against women. The model envisioned early intervention through measures such as immediate police response to distress signals including missed calls and periodic outreach by women police personnel to households to identify risks before they escalated into crimes.The aim was to strengthen community-linked policing, extending the state’s role beyond complaint-based response to proactive engagement in crime prevention.Five years later, it remains unclear whether this shift has translated into consistent preventive engagement.Police officials maintain that several Pink initiatives, including Pink Janamaithri Beat and Pink Patrol were rolled out across districts. However, field-level inputs suggest that key preventive components outlined in 2021, such as routine household outreach and structured rapid-response systems, have not evolved into a uniformly institutionalised practice across regions.Women police personnel associated with Pink units say operational pressures affect their ability to focus on proactive outreach.“People often think we deal only with crimes involving women, but the Pink Police unit functions round the clock. We respond to a range of emergencies from assisting accident victims to handling public disputes in addition to directives from the control room. Staff shortage, vehicle breakdowns and long duty hours make sustained preventive outreach difficult,” a woman police officer assigned in Pink Police unit told TOI.State crime records bureau data shows that crimes against children rose from 3,941 in 2020 to 5,903 in 2023, dipped in 2024 and climbed again to 5,537 in 2025. Sexual offences under Sections 4 and 6 of the Pocso Act increased steadily from 1,243 in 2020 to 2,242 in 2025, emerging as a major area of concern.Former women’s commission member Shahida Kamal said the effectiveness of women’s safety initiatives is closely linked to representation within decision-making structures.“In most districts, women are still underrepresented in senior leadership positions such as inspectors and assisynt commissioner of police. When policy decisions are taken at higher levels, the absence of women in those spaces can influence how priorities are set and implemented,” she said.“Safety is not only about patrols or response systems. It is also about how institutions understand risk, vulnerability and prevention. When leadership remains male-dominated, operational focus often tilts toward enforcement rather than early intervention or support-based mechanisms. That’s why the govt should give importance to promoting woman offical in higher ranks,” she added.She added that frontline women officers frequently face additional workload pressures that affect their ability to engage in preventive outreach.“Many women officers handle extended duties beyond their core assignments. Without adequate institutional support and representation at leadership levels, preventive policing, which requires time and sustained engagement becomes difficult to execute consistently,” she said.
