Single women demand pension, greater access to government schemes

Demanding adequate social security measures for them including pension and better access to government entitlements, scores of single women from different parts of the country have descended here for a two-day meeting starting tomorrow. The women, under the banner of the National Forum for Single Women's Rights, are seeking a minimum pension of Rs 2,000 and a single window application system for accessing government entitlements among other demands.

Ginny Srivastav, a Secretariat Member of the forum, said, "For the government, only widowed women qualify as single women leaving out the vast number of separated, abandoned, single mothers or older women who never married in the lurch." The forum, which claims to have 1,06,195 members nationally, started out at the state Rajasthan in the year 1999 before spreading to other states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, following which the national body was formed in the year 2008.

Sawita Kambale, a separated women from Maharashtra, said, "Like any other organised platform, this forum acts as a source of strength for us, like a ray of hope considering most of us come from the lower strata of the society and know very less about our rights." Saying that the forum essentially seeks to provide single women "freedom" and "dignity", she said that the forum do not agree with the "ashram culture" in Vrindavan wherein widows are encouraged to attain "moksha". "In Vrindavan, widows are encouraged to pray to god and attain moksha in their last days but we we want them to lead a life of dignity and freedom staying wherever they want," she said.