A volunteering force and some home truths

Flood relief work figures prominently in Chennai Home Guards’ annual calendar. As they help those in inundation-prone areas, one cannot help asking if these volunteers themselves would do with some help. Two Home Guards, one high up the totem pole and the other at the coalface, on what could be done for the betterment of this volunteering force and the movement it represents

Home Guards are pillars shoring up the police force, stepping into their boots in situations that stretch the latter’s resources to the limits.

Drawn from civilian citizenry, these “pillars” come in different, often sharply contrasting forms.

Here is presenting two representational pillars, embodying two categories of volunteers within the Home Guards collective. Sanjay Bhansali and S. Jothilakshmi: the former, a seasoned strategist in Chennai’s Home Guards ecosystem, and the latter, a trooper that has to translate strategy into beneficial action on the ground. Even outside this ecosystem, they occupy two polar realities.

Joining the Home Guards not out of necessity but for the satisfaction of serving a civic role, Sanjay is an entrepreneur when he does not don the cap of Area Commander, Home Guards’ Chennai East. The modest honorarium, ₹560 a day, holds no allure for him.

But it does for Jothilakshmi, a 35-year-old dialysis technician at Stanley Medical Hospital for whom every rupee in that daily honorarium counts. Even this honorarium is clasped by a tight cap: a Home Guard is allowed a maximum of ten days’ work in a month. Jothilakshmi is a home guard attached to the Tondiarpet police station, and usually, only when she is offered station duty can she rack up those 10 days.

It might be a lifeline, a reinforcement in the battle for survival, but Home Guards is as much an emotion to Jothilakshmi as it is to Sanjay. Her dream of joining the police force dashed by height requirement, she plumped for the next option, wearing khakhi fatigues as a Home Guard and serving in a supportive role to the police.

Both Sanjay and Jothilakshmi have thoughts to share about the honorarium and other features within Home Guards, for different reasons. Sanjay makes a point and he does not want to belabour it as it is plain as a pikestaff: this honorarium has no pulling power.

“Recruitment is our greatest challenge,” Sanjay confesses, “Convincing people to stay dedicated is no easy task when more secure jobs dangle better financial prospects before them.”

Positive strides such as access to police hospital facilities and issue of government canteen cards might have eased the burden, says Sanjay, but the core issues remain unresolved. Systemic changes, in his view, are required to make the movement robust and more effective in its application. Fleeting assignments should turn into a steadier and longer engagement, and by extension a more reliable source of sustenance, for those in the Home Guards serving on the ground, he says.

Sanjay has a dream. It is a dream of seeing this scattered, ad hoc assembly turned into a better structured, more modernised and rigorously trained unit.

At the root of any major improvement lies numbers – swelling the ranks with more volunteers.

Recruiting volunteers is tough. And recruiting women volunteers, tougher still, often due to a combination of dynamics at home and the inherent lack of significant tangible rewards from the service.

Jothilakshmi, part of Home Guards Chennai since 2016, has had to fend off anxious questions from her family, justifiably concerned about her safety. They were ill at ease when she had to undertake Home Guard assignments during the pandemic. She contracted COVID-19, quarantined herself, was cured and returned to Home Guard duties, her commitment not shaken in the least. Jothilakshmi evokes the image of a tightrope walker, striking an uneasy balance between two demanding jobs and household chores.

Though both jobs are demanding, each in its own way, Jothilakshmi derives her identity from being a dialysis technician and a Home Guard, each job filling her with pride.

“When I am in the Home Guard uniform, I feel protected,” she says with quiet strength. Besides paying bills, those ten days of service in a month gives her the heady sense of fulfilling a larger purpose. When cald in those khakhis, her duties could range from crowd control at high-profile events and demonstrations and maintaining order during elections to disaster relief work and even helping the police by making discreet enquiries to help crack a case.

A majority of the other Home Guards operating in the field are ruled by an even lesser star than Jothilakshmi’s. They end up in a taxing primary job to make ends meet. Due to this, volunteers might not be available when most in need. Unable to bear the burden, some even turn their back on the Home Guard movement.

And this has implications for the larger picture: the future for Home Guards that people like Sanjay envision can begin to be lived only if those at the coalface are sufficiently taken care of, and their ranks swell.

Published - October 19, 2024 10:15 am IST