The year was 2012 and it was during the aftermath of the Delhi gang-rape when the entire world was in mourning, questioning the fate of humanity and saluting the fearless spirit of Nirbhaya. The crowd that took to the streets reflected the barely suppressed anger that shook the system from its core.

At that time, 22-year-old IITian Aditya Gupta was in faraway Kenya, volunteering in an NGO. With a bright future ahead, his friends and acquaintances were sure that a job in a top company with a fat salary package was waiting for him. But the Nirbhaya incident had such an impact on him that he sacrificed his lucrative career for the sake of working for women empowerment.

So after three years where is Aditya? Today he is the flag bearer of the initiative, People for Parity (PIP) that works for gender equality and women empowerment.

“I think I sacrificed what was headed to be a standard, mediocre career for taking up one of the biggest problems that we are faced with today. In that sense, I think I have a much more brilliant career in the making right now. The amount of learning and expertise I have had to gather to work on the issue far exceeds what I needed to learn to be a good consultant,” says Aditya.

A techie in the heart, it was after tweaking with the engineer inside him, Aditya went on to develop an app called ‘Pukar’, which addresses the issue of women’s safety in a unique way.

When in distress, on pressing a button in the app will lead to sending the location of a person to her phone contacts with the help of GPS, mobile data and towers. This is the first such mobile app in India, that has also collaborated with the Police, so that at the time of need, the law is also on the side of the public.

Although this is just the tip of the iceberg as far the contribution of Aditya for women empowerment is concerned. He is also behind another programme called Pratiti, which is a workshop based approach of working towards gender equality and to put an end to violence against women.

And in his quest to throw some light on the lives of countless sufferers, Aditya has met with a few kindred spirits, who also gave up their high profile careers to champion the causes of women’s rights.

The result? Now he is supported by a banker from UK who gave up his job for the cause, a software engineer from Delhi and a masters’ student from the University of Illinois, all of them, dedicated crusaders for PIP.

After hearing about Aditya and his friends, we surely understand that the beacon of hope that just this one motley group has brought with it shows that how important is the participation of men in the tirade against gender inequality.

If a few youngsters can bring so much change, then is it too optimistic to say that at the end of the day, the power to restore sanity in this world rests with us?

Give it a thought. Just saying.