Women at the Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi.

(Mary Knox Merrill/Staff)

Photos (1 of 1)

India: On ‘Ladies Special’ trains, there are no men to harass women

India's new female railways minister introduced women-only trains in major cities, in response to the female workforce doubling and complaints of harassment on public transit.

By Mian Ridge | Correspondent 11.03.09

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

NEW DELHI – They don’t look anything like Indian trains: no jostling crowds, no littered floors, and most of all – in this male-dominated society – no men. Eight women-only trains, called the Ladies Specials, are now chugging their way around Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai (Madras), and Calcutta.

The trains were introduced by India’s new, female railways minister, Mamata Banerjee, in response to one of the biggest changes sweeping India: the upsurge in working women.

Since 1995, the number of Indian women with jobs has doubled. But if the Ladies Specials are a marker of social change, so are some men’s reactions to them. There have been reports of male passengers trying to board the Ladies Specials with force, and complaining bitterly when they are stopped at the door.

“Oh, ho – the sort of men who used to molest me when I traveled by train will hate the Ladies Specials,” says Indrani Bhattachariya, a research assistant for a multinational, who now commutes to work by auto rickshaw. She believes that many of the men who harassed her – jeering when she ran for a train, for example – “were threatened by a woman in her smart work clothes. They feel they are losing control so they have to mock and molest,” she adds.

Indeed, Ms. Banerjee was prompted to introduce the Ladies Specials because of increasing reports from female commuters of “Eve teasing,” a term here for sexual harassment. Jam-packed trains are perfect territory for harassers, and India’s railways are the most crowded in the world. Mumbai’s railway transports 7 million commuters a day. Eight trains won’t accommodate all India’s working women, of course. “The trains are great, but … if the government really wanted to support women it would educate them all,” says Ms. Bhattachariya.

Female literacy in India is below 50 percent.

<< How does Simon Mann stack up among Africa’s white mercenaries? | Main

Comments

1. Re-Thinker | 11.04.09

“India’s railways are the most crowded in the world”. This sounds like an insult to the Japanese, who thought their trains were the most packed in the world. Does India use train packers, to push the last few passengers in to the car before the doors close? Japan does.
Japan has ladies only cars, not trains, also not fully packed, and therefore also inefficient and costly.
Japanese female literacy is somewhere around 97%, so literacy probably has little to do with it.

2. crpatel | 11.06.09

I have witnessed many instances of rude behaviour.I wish
someone would teach them Un-armed combat,so that they could defend themselves against unruly behaviour. C.R.Patel

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

Leave a Comment

  By clicking "Submit Comment", you agree to our Terms of Service.

We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.

Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.

Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.

Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.