State Resource Centre for Women (Haryana)

What is the State Resource Centre for Women in Haryana?

State Resource Centre for Women, commonly abbreviated SRCW, is the technical support unit set up under the Department of Women and Child Development, Haryana. The department describes its purpose plainly: to "provide technical assistance towards implementing programmes, laws and schemes meant for women".

State Resource Centre for Women sits one level above the district machinery. Where a One Stop Centre handles an individual woman's case and Women Helpline 181 takes her call, SRCW works on the machinery itself; whether front-line staff know the law, whether districts report gender-disaggregated data, whether departments outside Women and Child Development factor women's needs into their programmes.

SRCW is funded on a 60:40 cost-sharing model between the central government and the Haryana government. It is a state-level institution and not a district-replicated facility.

Who is SRCW for, and who cannot apply?

SRCW works with:

• Government departments in Haryana that run programmes touching women, from health and education to police and labour.
• District administrations and District Programme Officers implementing Women and Child Development schemes.
• Front-line functionaries; anganwadi workers and supervisors, protection officers, One Stop Centre staff, helpline counsellors, who need training.
• Civil society organisations and research institutions partnering on awareness, research or capacity building.

Who cannot apply:

• An individual woman cannot apply to SRCW for a cash benefit, pension, scholarship or grant. SRCW disburses no personal entitlement.
• A woman facing violence should not apply to SRCW for case help. That route is Women Helpline 181 or the district One Stop Centre, which are designed for individual cases and available round the clock.
• A person seeking employment cannot apply through SRCW as a scheme. The four SRCW posts are filled through the department's own recruitment process.
• A private business cannot apply for funding. SRCW is not a grant-making body.

This distinction is the single point readers most often get wrong, so it is worth restating: SRCW is an institutional resource, and no citizen application flow exists for it.

What functions does SRCW perform?

According to the Haryana Women and Child Development Department, the centre's functions cover five areas:

1. Implementation support for women-focused schemes and policies, providing technical inputs to the department and to districts.
2. Research and data collection on gender issues, including maintaining gender-disaggregated data so that programme decisions rest on evidence rather than assumption.
3. Capacity building through training programmes for officials and front-line staff.
4. Awareness material designed to challenge discriminatory social norms, which is where SRCW's work overlaps with Beti Bachao Beti Padhao messaging.
5. Inter-departmental coordination so that programme delivery for women is integrated rather than siloed.

The department also lists SRCW's objectives as reviewing gender-sensitive policies, supporting women's empowerment initiatives, maintaining gender-disaggregated data, and strengthening schemes such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and the Women Helpline.

How to approach the State Resource Centre for Women

Because SRCW handles institutional requests, the route is a written approach rather than an application form:

1. Identify what you actually need, a training session for staff, a technical note on a law or scheme, data support, or a partnership on awareness work. SRCW responds to specific requests, not general enquiries.
2. Route the request through the correct office. A district request should go through the District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development; a departmental request through the department's own headquarters.
3. Write to the State Project Coordinator, State Resource Centre for Women, Department of Women and Child Development, Haryana, setting out the request, the number of people to be covered and the proposed timeline.
4. Follow up with the relevant specialist. Training requests go to the Training Specialist and gender-analysis or policy questions to the Gender Specialist.
5. Share your programme data where the request involves analysis. SRCW's gender-disaggregated data function depends on districts supplying data.

Who staffs the Haryana SRCW?

The Haryana Women and Child Development Department publishes four SRCW positions with names and contact numbers:

These are official contacts published by the department. They are working numbers for institutional coordination, not a distress helpline. A woman in danger should dial 181, which runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

How SRCW fits into Haryana's women's safety system

Haryana's system for women has three visible layers, and SRCW is the least visible but the one that holds the others up:

• Women Helpline 181, operational since 3 December 2018 from Mahila Police Station, Sector 5, Panchkula, takes the call.
• 22 One Stop Centres, one in each district, handle the case — medical, FIR, counselling, legal aid and up to 5 days of shelter.
• State Resource Centre for Women trains the people staffing those two, keeps the gender data, and pushes other departments to align.

Nationally, the components SRCW supports sit within Mission Shakti, whose Sambal sub-scheme covers the One Stop Centre, Women Helpline, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Nari Adalat, while the Samarthya sub-scheme covers Palna, PMMVY, Sakhi Niwas, Shakti Sadan and SANKALP.

Where to go for individual help instead

• Women Helpline: 181; free, 24x7, for any woman in distress in Haryana.
• District One Stop Centre; walk-in support in all 22 districts.
• District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development, for scheme-level grievances at the district.
• wcdhry.gov.in, the department's website, which lists scheme pages and district contacts.

SRCW charges nothing for its technical support, and no individual is ever asked to pay a fee in its name.

How to check your request status with SRCW

SRCW is a technical support unit, not a benefit disbursement scheme, so there is no application number, no online tracker and no SMS status update to check. If you have written to the State Project Coordinator on behalf of a department, district office or organisation, here is how to follow up:

• Call the relevant specialist directly rather than waiting for a written reply. Training requests should be followed up with the Training Specialist, and gender-analysis or policy requests with the Gender Specialist, using the contact numbers the Haryana Women and Child Development Department publishes for each post.
• Keep a copy of your written request with the date it was sent and the office it was routed through (District Programme Officer or department headquarters), since SRCW deals with specific written requests rather than open enquiries.
• Follow up through the same channel you used to send the request. A district-routed request should be chased through the District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development, not directly, since that is the office SRCW expects the request to have come from.
• Do not confuse this with an emergency status check. SRCW's own coordination work has no case number to track. If the underlying need is help for a woman in distress rather than institutional coordination, that is handled through Women Helpline 181 or the district One Stop Centre, both of which take the case directly rather than routing it through SRCW.

Common reasons an SRCW request is not taken up

Because SRCW responds to specific institutional requests rather than approving or rejecting individual applications, "rejection" here means a request that stalls, is redirected, or is not acted on. The department's own description of how SRCW works points to these recurring issues:

• The request is too general. SRCW is set up to respond to a defined need, a training session, a technical note, a data request, not a broad ask for "support" or "help with women's schemes." Restate the request as a specific deliverable: how many people need training, on what subject, or what data is required.
• It was sent through the wrong office. A district-level need routed directly to SRCW instead of through the District Programme Officer, Women and Child Development, or a departmental need sent without going through that department's own headquarters, is likely to be redirected back rather than actioned. Route the request through the correct office first.
• It was addressed to the wrong specialist. Training requests sent to the Gender Specialist, or policy and data questions sent to the Training Specialist, take longer to reach the right person. Address the request to the specialist whose function actually matches the ask.
• It is actually an individual case, not an institutional one. A request submitted on behalf of one woman seeking a personal benefit, cash support, or help with a violence case is outside what SRCW can act on, since SRCW does not disburse individual entitlements or handle casework. These should go to Women Helpline 181 or the district One Stop Centre instead.
• Supporting data was not shared. Where a request depends on analysis, SRCW's ability to respond depends on the district or department first supplying the gender-disaggregated data the request is built on. A request without that underlying data is likely to be held up pending it.