Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

‘Love You Zindagi’ (LYZ) was designed by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (AVVP), Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, for helping the paramilitary personnel working in conflict areas like Kashmir to deal with stress which at times ended with suicides. In the last two years, as many as 28,000 personnel of the 22 battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the Srinagar Sector were counseled under this programme to lead stress-free lives.

“The main issue was the monopolization of patriarchy even as other issues including incompatibility of tempers, behavioural disorders, mistrust, financial insufficiency, and elongated deployment without leave were also factored in”, said one of the master trainers. He said that many relationships were saved from breaking when jawans were sensitized against misjudging and mistreating their families from a long distance.

Another LYZ trainer revealed the soldiers were acquainted with the UPI and digital payments, and encouraged to buy scooties for their wives and it changed things. “We were thrilled to see jawans chatting happily with their wives on an off day over the phone as against the arguments and angry reactions earlier.” Now, with scooters and ease of payment, their wives were handling responsibilities efficiently, taking off their worries, he said.

The JYZ was first implemented in Telangana when 30 Constables and Sub Inspectors attended a workshop in the Mahbubnagar district. A non-profit organization ‘People for Parity’ was involved in initiating gender conversations with the men. It was aimed at helping them have a fresh perspective on their relationship dynamics with their partners”.

The group was exposed to exercises over 5 months and then sent back to their respective Police stations. The men were changed as they were now in a better, respectful, and equal relationship with their partners. This transformation even impacted their work. They showed sensitivity to women coming with complaints against their partner to the police station.

“When I joined Bihar Sector CRPF, in 2018 as IG, interaction with the men posted in Naxalite-affected Chakarbandha and Lutua, in Gaya and Aurangabad, confirmed my belief that they were suffering from the burden of patriarchy and did not know how to handle it. This was leading to higher levels of stress and strong disenchantment with life and relationships including suicides”, Charu Sinha, who introduced LYZ in Kashmir and is now heading CRPF’s Hyderabad sector, said.

In his 38-40-year career in CRPF, a man lives away from his family for around 25-28 yrs. Community living in barracks, with no personal space, not much time off in conflict theatres, harsh living and working conditions, isolation from family, breakdown in communication due to long-distance relationships, lack of bonding, fraternity, and camaraderie in the unit take a toll.

“A few gaps were found at the level of trainers and implementation enablers (officers) and the method of implementation, which were then discussed with Gender Research Cell, Amrita University, Coimbatore, which was requested to design a curriculum encompassing not only gender conversations but also mental health, cognitive behavioural distortions, communication skills, anger management”, said a senior official.

“GMHAT tools were then used to assess the levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and PTSD with the help of HOD Psychiatry, AIIMS Patna, in every Battalion. Then began the process of selection of Master Trainers and Frontline trainers”, he added.

Teams of Master Trainers and Front Line Trainers were raised in 3 months. The idea was to enable the force personnel to understand how the burden of patriarchy affected them and that through better understanding they could change their relationship dynamics with their partner and treat their wives as an equal partner in marriage rather than someone who has been brought in to serve the family.

“The ultimate aim of the programme is to endeavour to impact mental health and reduce the possibility of suicides in CRPF in a conflict theatre like Kashmir. So we primarily focused on the mental health of the personnel by providing them with coping strategies that would make them internally stronger to cope with whatever life brings. We further focused on communication skills, correction of perception distortions, and anger management. This is how we customized LYZ as per CRPF’s need in areas like Kashmir”, said an official.

A week-long online familiarization meeting was conducted by AVVP with 48 officers of Units of Srinagar sector in 2 batches in January 2021. 

Officers shared their opinions about the requirements of such a course, delineating the challenges they face while handling mental health issues of personnel, the need for skill sets in understanding the subject of Mental Health, the need for Gender training, etc.

LYZ was then planned to be conducted in a phase-wise manner. Two officers from each unit were selected, who are open to new concepts, not cynical or resistant, and have good communication and presentation skills, based on feedback about their abilities from peers, subordinates, and senior officers.

A pool of 10 faculty members from AVVP and ‘People for Parity’ conducted a month-long training. In February 2021, the course was conducted in Srinagar for 54 officers including 5 from the Indian Army.

In Phase- II, 24 SOs/ORs for each unit were trained. 

As technical infrastructure at the company headquarters of CRPF is a bare minimum of a TV set only and a music system. As phase-III was to be run in different locations it was difficult for the Unit to provide Projector and Laptop at each company level.

To address this issue, AVVP came up with a wonderful solution to convert the entire course content into video with embedded audio format to be run on any TV set available. All the content was also translated into the Hindi language so that every man up to the last one in the unit understood it.

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“It is ordinarily difficult to quantify the success of a programme like LYZ. In most of the cases, we cannot identify the persons or their families. But we have thousands of citations showing how life was rekindled at their depressed homes”, Charu Sinha said.