Drivers of change

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Drivers of change

Thursday, 02 May 2019 | Chahak Mittal

Drivers of change

Single mums are picking up jobs as app-based cab drivers in the city, challenging stereotypes. By Chahak Mittal

There might not be a ban but there is definitely a bias when it comes to women who choose driving as their profession in India. The term ‘women drivers’ in itself is evidence that females controlling the steering wheel aren’t considered a normal phenomenon.

While society continues to pull them down or apply certain deeply-rooted stereotypes, some women are driving  change and feel that ‘nobody would call women the weaker sex if they themselves did not disparage their own kind.’ These women drivers aim to challenge convention rather than abiding by it and believe that each should encourage another female rather than pulling them down. And in the process, set an example as to how women need to collect themselves and get their act together rather than stereotyping their own roles determined by patriarchy long back.

Hailing from Rajasthan, currently a driver for app-based taxi service Uber, Gulesh Chauhan is a 42-year-old woman who got married when she was just 17. Having shifted to Ghaziabad, she had an infant in her arms the very next year. While the baby was still young, she lost her husband to an accident. It was her mother who encouraged her to step out of her “veil” and take charge of her life and son. “I was the woman who hid comfortably behind her ghoonghat (veil) and happily depended on her family for livelihood. I could cook well and thought that I would do something related to that without stepping out of the domains of my household. However, my mother wanted me to get out and experience the ways of the world myself,” says Gulesh.

Her mother sent her to learn how to drive a car and even a bike. Initially, however, she felt that she “could never gain enough confidence to drive alone.” However, once she did, she combined her past and present lives. “After learning driving, I cooked and delivered food while riding an Activa scooty. After a few months, I met with an accident and almost at the same time my mother’s cancer worsened. I was on bed rest for four months and the doctors told me not to work for four more years. Our financial conditions went haywire.”

The accident, she says, had weakened not only her body but also her spirits. However, gathering all her courage, she decided that she could not lie on her bed to “watch her world falling apart.” But it was her son who finally played a key role. He would write their phone number on a piece of paper, she told us, and secretly distribute it around in search of a job for a woman driver. Soon he heard about the app-based cabs in the city.

While that indeed looked like a good way out for Gulesh, she was upset with her son for even thinking that his mother would drive across the streets and people would pay her for the services. “Have we stooped to such a level that I’d sit in the front and drive people places? I wondered. Main aurat hokar gaadi chalaungi? (Being a woman, I’ll have to drive?) I was never ready for the job. However, it was my little son who made me realise that gender doesn’t decide a profession,” says she and now it’s been four years that she’s been happily driving across Delhi NCR.

Today, she feels that every woman, who is dependent on her husband or her family, is capable of driving her own life and working for herself. “There are so many women I have come across who have to ask for money from their husbands at home and lose their self-respect — I feel each one them can get on the streets and work even if they haven’t studied much in their youth. They just need thodi si himmat (little courage),” she says.

Satyawati Kashyap, a 37-year-old, is another driver whose story is an example of how preparing oneself for struggles and a combative spirit could make women nothing short of powerful. Even though she had learnt to drive at a young age, it was when she lost her husband to a deadly disease, a few years after her marriage, that the idea to put the skill to use crossed her mind. While dropping her son to school on a bike, she came across an advertisement offering a job at a taxi service company.

The radio taxi hired only women and payed Rs 23 per kilometre. It navigated the routes through a call centre which would dictate the paths as there was no GPS tracking technology at that time. However, the company shut down after a few weeks. Later, after her daughter qualified for AIIMS, it became even more important for her to earn since their financial capabilities weren’t adequate to pay the fees.

She says, “Post that, I joined the app-based taxi and realised that here, I wasn’t a slave to anyone. No one was my boss. I bought my own car and drove it.”

Talking about the stereotypes, she heard after she chose the profession, which isn’t supposedly “meant” for women as per the stringent rules of the Indian society, Satyawati says that the fault lies not in the gender, but in people’s mentality. “It’s their stupid patriarchal notion that women cannot drive well or they should not follow driving as a profession as it is meant for men. However, I feel that men’s mentality, especially in India, cannot change. By God’s grace I have never met with any accident in the past 12 years since I have been driving. Or even paid a fine. I feel that a woman is stronger than every man and this is what every woman should feel,” she exclaims.

Another driver called Shanno (full name not revealed), 38, was among the first women in Delhi to start driving a taxi. With two daughters and a son, she handles her household single-handedly and firmly believes that even through circumstances could sometimes be unbearable, women have the power to defy them and emerge victorious. “I didn’t get a good education. Hence, my work options were limited. I enrolled in the Azad Foundation when they started training women,” she says as she recalls that even though her husband was a driving trainer, she only learnt to drive after his demise.

As official data from app-based taxis like Ola, Uber and Taxiforsure reveals, more than 20 women drive cabs in the capital and single-handedly manage their households. And these women are evidence that they are leaving no stone unturned in making the informal sector, especially the transport industry, more inclusive for themselves.

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