This 3,800km walk has a special message

NEW DELHI: How does one prove that a woman can do things people don’t normally think they can?

Walk

across the

breadth

of India? Well, that is precisely what Srishti Bakshi is doing to raise

awareness

about women’s empowerment.

The 260-day, 3,800-km odyssey began after the 30-year-old marketing professional heard the chilling news about a mother and daughter, aged 35 and 14, dragged out of their car and raped by a group of men in in Bulandshahr, UP, in 2016. Based in Hong Kong then, Bakshi was mortified by how people in foreign countries perceived India due to incidents like this. She quit her job and returned home, determined to make a difference to gender relations in the country, knowing only this would help correct perceptions abroad.

“The tragic news of the rape rattled me and I needed a way to cope with that,” says Bakshi. The alumna of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, started a crowd-funded project called CrossBow Miles with the aim of empowering women through digital and financial literacy. As part of the awareness campaign, she set out on foot in September last year to traverse the distance from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. After walking 2,800 km over 166 days, she reached Delhi on Wednesday.

“I cover a daily distance of around 30 km. My walk represents a fight against violence and deep-rooted gender bias in the country,” Bakshi explains. “People believe walking is exercise and I can tell a five-year-old or a 60-year-old about my objectives. This journey intends to engage millennials in women’s economic empowerment through collective participation.”

Adept at using both traditional and digital marketing platforms, Dehradun-born Bakshi holds workshops to educate women she meets on technology and financial independence. She uses social media as the main channel to sensitise citizens about violence against women. In every state she has covered, she has put up street art that spreads this message. In Delhi, Purnima Sukumar, the head of Bakshi’s art team, led the others in painting their 18th wall on the theme, one near Delhi University’s Ramjas College, in bright, cheerful colours.

Designated a ‘Champion for Change’ by the United Nations Empower Women initiative, Bakshi still has many kilometres and over 90 days of walking still left in her itinerary. But for her it is well worth it if this helps herald in a new day for women in India.