My Safetipin Mobile Phone Application: Case Study of E-participation Platform for Women Safety in India

Women Safety is a major public challenge in India which is the world’s second most populous nation making it the most dangerous country for women in the world. While the government and non-government organizations are trying their level best to fight against this menace, there is a new mobile-based application named “My Safetipin” which attempts to create online participation platform for women in India to help each other in identifying locations which are unsafe for them so that the situation can be improved. Use of Digital Democracy platforms in the form of a mobile application for improving societal issues shows the increasing utilization of the Internet in a country where the Internet mobile is the most favored tool for using the Internet outreach is still 20.25% in Rural India while 65% in Urban India according to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) report based on census 2011. For our research we have used mixed methods which includes Interface Accessibility Analysis, Usability Testing as well as GIS mapping of this mobile phone availability followed by secondary data analysis of user review over of this mobile application over android play store application. This research will help us in understanding whether e-participation platforms over mobile platform really help a citizen in resolving women safety issue resolve issue democratically or simply help in providing an additional platform to create more sensitization.