16th December 2012 is a date that Indian’s will never forget.
The brutal rape of 23-year-old Jyoti Singh (Nirbhaya) left a permanent scar on our collective memory. While the entire country was outraged and did not stop protesting until the six rapists were booked, a young man took it upon himself to fight against the offenders of every Nirbhaya he came across.
Dipesh Tank and his nine friends started a campaign called ‘War against Railway Rowdies’ in 2013 and helped the railway police to catch hold of 150 sexual harassers in Mumbai locals.
“I am not a superhero. I am a human too. I get tired at times….I want people to stop applauding and start doing it themselves. I dream of a day when I can let go a fight against eve-teasing because there will be enough people to fight against it,” he says.
The root of respect for women in Dipesh goes back to his childhood. Dipesh has been brought up by a strong mother, Rekha Tank, who started a catering business after his father was diagnosed with a knot in his pancreas.
Dipesh was too young to understand what his mother went through then but has witnessed his mother dealing with the struggles of life very gracefully.
“My mother would take extra care of the girl hostesses. She would make it a point to drop them home herself after late night parties. The way she brought us up made us understand that every woman deserves respect,” he says.
Though poor financial conditions forced Dipesh to drop out of college, he never stopped learning. To support his mother, Dipesh started working as an office boy in a computer manufacturing company.
He learnt everything there about computer hardware in five years and then joined a call centre. The job gave him financial independence as he could finally pay off all the loans, leave the chawl at Vile Parle and shift his family to a one bedroom flat in Malad.
He started his NGO ‘Youth for People’, that rescues citizens in need of help. Everyone in the NGO keeps a day job and yet manages to reach out to people across the country.
Till 2012, the NGO focussed on blood donation camps, education and helping the underprivileged. However, another incident in 2012 shook Dipesh to the core – like many of us. It was the Nirbhaya gang rape incident.
“People were outraged. There were protest marches, but still every day this was happening to every other girl. I felt truly ashamed to be a man at that time. One thing was clear in my mind that the change has to happen from the very basics. And that day I made a promise to Nirbhaya that at least around me, I will not let this happen to any woman, ” he says.
“85% of the women told us that they feel unsafe at the station where they are vulnerable to regular sexual harassment,” informs Dipesh.
To take a step forward, Dipesh now works for US-based NGO ‘Take her back’ – which works against human trafficking in India.
His NGO, Youth for People, has also achieved a lot in the past ten years. They began a notebook donation program in 2014 to address the lack of affordable blank notebooks for school children in the rural community.
In 2016, the program’s success expanded to 200,000 notebooks in 300 schools for 40,000 children.
“When you do the right thing, the universe protects you and makes you able to do a lot of good things. So just stand up and do the right thing,” he says with a smile.