Free Rides For Women In Public Transport Is Part Of Delhi Govt’s Push To Make City Safe
Revolutionary, inclusive public policy or gender-appeasing vote bank politics? Since the Kejriwal government in Delhi announced free rides for women in public transport, almost everyone has had an opinion on it. In his column for The Indian Express this week, Jasmine Shah weighs in on the debate.
"The Delhi government’s decision solves an important part of this problem by making public transport the default mode of transport for the city’s women. Experts across the globe vouch that public transport is the safest mode of transport — there’s safety in numbers. In Delhi, a large fraction of women from poor and lower middle classes, often living at the margins of existence, are constrained to walk long distances or use unsafe modes of transport than buying a bus ticket. The metro is not even an option for most of them." - Jasmine Shah in The Indian ExpressAssaults In Loos To Chest Stares...My Life Without Gender
Men’s facewash, women’s perfume, men’s toothpaste, women’s razors.
Look around you and almost everything is compartmentalised into some gender binary. What does it feel like, therefore, to grow up gender-fluid or gender non-binary in such a society? It’s Pride Month and the best time, really, to try and understand the experiential struggles of gender-queer people especially in Indian society. You can start with this fascinating first-person account of a non-binary Indian by an author named Smita in today’s Times Of India.
"Up until two years ago, I had long hair. Apparently, that was sufficient for me to qualify as a woman. Since I have started to actively identify as non-binary and appear non-binary, my relationship with public spaces has changed drastically, even, and sometimes especially, in the spaces which are deemed safe for women. In the past two years, I have been told to go to the men’s bathroom, the men’s security check lines at airports, malls, and theatres, and to the men’s changing room, numerous times. I usually ignore the instructions or correct them if needed and head to the women’s lines (because where else will I go?). Last year, at the Delhi domestic airport, I stood in the women’s security check line. The female security guard said that it’s the women’s line. I replied that I know and that I’m a woman, and walked into that little cabin where they do the checking. She then asked, “Kya aap pakka aurat ho?” (Are you sure you’re a woman?) as if my answer would change, and then proceeded to run the metal detector particularly hard against my breasts. I was shocked and then angry. I asked for the superior officer and filed a complaint against her for harassment. If a male security office cannot do that to me, why should it be okay for a female security officer to do so? As expected, the complaint didn’t go anywhere." - Smita in The Times Of IndiaIndia Has Gone From False Hopes In 2014 To False Pride In 2019
Not quite done with our election analysis yet, are we? Neither is Pranab Bardhan. In his column for The Indian Express, Bardhan tries to figure out what exactly worked for Modi this time around. He invariably comes to the conclusion that as opposed to the reach of the Modi government’s welfare schemes, it is the sense of national pride that he has evoked in people that won him this election.
"These are early days to carry out a full analysis of the electoral data for deciphering the range of explanatory factors, but there are enough straws in the wind to venture some guesses. First, it is unlikely that the economic achievements of the Modi regime played much of a role, and it is not a coincidence that the ruling party campaigns, particularly in periods of apparent desperation, did not much emphasise them either. Some did talk about toilets (though the actual use of those toilets lagged far behind their bureaucratic targets of construction) and gas cylinders for the poor (though evidence suggests refills of those cylinders lagged far behind their initial acquisition), but their impact on voting behaviour was likely to have been marginal (as suggested by the opinion polls by mid-February). One, of course, did not hear much about the slaying of the dragon of corruption through demonetisation, the grand hoax of November 2016. The stories of agrarian distress, which led to the hurried start of the PM-KISAN scheme, did not melt away and with the current state of land records, the two-hectare limit in the scheme must have been a block in implementation in large parts of the country. The other economic concern about the lack of good jobs for young people remained uppermost in many a mind, a promise of 2014 obviously belied." - Pranab Bardhan in The Indian ExpressJustice That Heals
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