Sreeparna Chakrabarty By

NEW DELHI: In India, one needs to be a woman to be a victim of gender discrimination—at least that is what most incidents, be it dowry related or physical harassment, imply. However, men too are victims of discrimination, and fighting for their rights is a woman campaigner who has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding this.

“Are men not citizens of India? PM Modi ji please end this gender discrimination by initiating a discussion on men’s issues as men are humans too...” reads Barkha Trehan’s letter.

Gender discrimination, at least in India, is vastly misunderstood—suicide rates particularly that of married men are going up every year, there are hardly a few campaigns for prostate cancer when compared to breast cancer, and these are only a few examples. However, these concerns were raised by a woman who fights for men and their rights.

As far as health policies are concerned, men have a very few options when compared to women. Speaking to The Sunday Standard, ‘men’s rights’ activist Barkha Trehan, who runs an event management company in Delhi, said all health schemes by the Centre and the state governments are focussed on women. In her letter, which has been forwarded to the Union Health Ministry for deliberations by the PMO, Trehan has sought Modi’s appointment to discuss health issues faced by men, especially the high suicide rates. She also wrote that most politicians or judges are male, that does not mean they work to protect rights of vulnerable men. “This is the reason for suicide of almost 100,000 men every single year, of which 25,000 suicides are just due to family reasons. Men in power must accept and acknowledge vulnerability of ordinary men.” Every nine minutes, a married man commits suicide, according to the data of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). However, no one talks about men’s issues.

The letter says: “Accidents have led to the death of around 1.4 lakh men in the year 2014 alone. Men have to take life-threatening risks every day because they are considered as unpaid bodyguards to their family. Society also expects men to take risks to save others.”

“Women have a lot of government-sponsored distress helpline numbers to seek help. Men do not have even one government-sponsored helpline,” wrote the activist.