The Indian government is planning to announce the specifications and standards for a safety device for women which will be able to alert the police about their location in case of an emergency. This declaration was recently made by Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who heads the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
The announcement will be made next month in January and will be the standards based on which manufacturing companies can build the gadget in question. Although nothing specific has been given away, Prasad did hint that the device’s main feature would be its ability to let a woman in distress to notify the police with a touch of a button.
We’re probably looking at a phone since Prasad noted that pressing the SOS button would automatically switch on the GPS function in the handset, as reported by The Economic Times. The alert would be beamed to the nearest police station along with the location of the person in need. The technology powering the device has been created by DEITY’s C-DAC computing arm and industry experts.
Also see: Kanpur police force releases SOS mobile app for women’s safety
Another safety-related project in the pipeline is an initiative to track and find missing children. It’s scheduled to roll out within a month’s time. Then there’s a Digital Locker venture being worked upon. It will let people store their certificates and documents in a virtual locker which can be made accessible to any authority who needs to see it, doing away with the requirement of attesting copies.
As for the safety device for women, it’s possible that tenders may be invited for its production and some sort of subsidy could be offered to buyers. It’s all part of the grand scheme of things, which is the Digital India initiative that the government is focusing on heavily at present.