Mamta Saini, a 33-year-old mother of two from New Delhi, is driving into a man's world. She changed out of her pink dupatta and into blue jeans and a white collared shirt for the occasion, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail and tucked under a baseball cap. Saini is familiar enough with her surroundings to slide into the right side of a compact car that has been her driving classroom for three months. She runs her hands along the curve of the steering wheel. A young man, her teacher, is whispering instructions from the passenger side and Saini cautiously accelerates around a busy block. She has already picked up a very Delhi habit: honk, and honk often. Rickshaw drivers flank her sides; she sees pedestrians dart across the road.
Saini faces a much fiercer challenge, however, when she finally makes it onto the roads on her own as a taxi driver, jostling for space with five million other vehicles, asserting herself to passengers and colleagues in a very male arena. She's part of a growing number of Indian women who are considering taxi driving as a possible career. Many come from low-income backgrounds, have little schooling and, for different reasons, need to support their families.
"It's a very good step from India's point of view," said Harinder Kaur, the leading force behind a programme launched by the All India Women's Conference (AIWC) and a non-governmental organisation that plans to get women driving taxis in the capital for the Commonwealth Games next year. Saini is one of its graduates. "People all over the world can see that women can do everything." But in this country of more than one billion, many women aren't allowed to do much, and Kaur clearly sees the taxi initiative within the larger framework of empowering Indian women, many of whom remain strikingly marginalised.
Another similar, but private, venture called Forsche (pronounced For She) has already employed female taxi drivers in Mumbai. It rolled out a contingent of twenty cars in Delhi this week. "I started this as a business," said Revathi Roy, founder of Forsche and a former taxi driver. "I did not realise what kind of empowerment we're doing until I started meeting the women who were coming to drive."
At 15 rupees (Dh1.10) a kilometre (the same as a regular radio taxi), and 12 hour days, drivers make anywhere from 6,000 rupees (Dh440) to 12,000 rupees (Dh880) a month. The service is available around the clock in Mumbai and, initially, from 8am to 8pm in Delhi. A complement of just two taxis in 2007 has grown to 40, after Roy partnered with a radio taxi firm that operates cabs in both cities. The AIWC project also started small - the first batch of 10 women recently graduated from a comprehensive training programme and another 10 are in school now. But the group has yet to purchase taxi cars, and organisers are actively seeking sponsors to help shift the initiative into its next phase. Once the vehicles are acquired, Kaur, president of the AIWC West Delhi branch, envisages partnering with hotels and Commonwealth Games venues to give her fleet of female drivers a footing in a lucrative taxi market. She says some people prefer riding with women drivers, and her drivers could help fill a niche.
They also prepare for unforeseen circumstances, which Kaur suggests can be of a sinister kind. She references the care that ladies must take on Delhi streets, the fact that many are not safe in their homes and that they become moving targets for unwanted advances in the taxis. "Personality classes" illuminate the finer points of how to treat each passenger differently: chat up the foreigners, exchange polite words with Indian women and say as little as possible to Indian men, who might otherwise get the wrong idea. For the worst of circumstances, the taxi trainees are also trained in karate.
Most of the trainees who come from poorer families have never held a job before, and they expressed a keen interest in earning money to help their families. "In India, men want women to be in the home, taking care of children, making chapatti. We're trying to change them," said Kaur. "First we have to take them out of their cages, empower these ladies." Mamta Saini took the first steps on her own. Married at 22 to a man that she now describes as "mentally disturbed", Saini rents rooms in their north Delhi home to feed her two children, an 11-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy. Her husband stopped driving an auto-rickshaw three years ago. Getting behind the wheel caught her fancy, and she talked about learning how to drive, but the family had to sell the three-wheeler. Then, last year, she saw an article in a newspaper advertising AIWC's taxi programme. It took her months to find Kaur, and when she did she was adamant about how the lessons could help her. Her husband was apprehensive of her ambition.
"I'm challenging him, telling him this time you earn money or I will do this for the family," she said, on the top floor of a petrol station where the trainees usually meet for driving classes. "I'm not so educated, so I will not get any good job in another field." Kaur says it's not just the lower classes that see the value in a taxi profession; college girls have expressed interest in signing up.
"I asked them why do you want to learn how to do this? You are already doing these professional courses. But they are saying no, this is a very good job," said Kaur. It remains to be seen how easily the women drivers are accepted into a very male framework. Roy said taxi ladies have been well received in Mumbai, and both men and women in and outside the profession cheer on the initiative. She acknowledges that Delhi, however, has a reputation for being a more conservative - and more dangerous - city.
Forsche is aimed at a female or family clientele, but drivers are still schooled in martial arts training. They receive "soft skill" training and instructions on how to work a car's GPS system and panic button. "These girls come from background where they don't know anything. I teach them behaviour patterns, attitude, etiquette, grooming and hygiene. They don't know English. We teach them basic English," said Roy.
There are other benefits, too. "It has just increased their social status, their standard of living. On a lighthearted note, some of them have started getting proposals for marriage because now they are earning members." The AIWC trainees also dream of the changes they might see, once they get on the road. Neetu Sharma's husband has been ill for some time, and she ekes out a meagre living working as a receptionist at a government hospital. Half the family's income goes to paying rent and she says a supplemental income will go a long way.
Meanwhile, widow Param Jeet Kaur, 36, is raising four children on her husband's pension. She sits up straight, and confidence resonates from her raspy voice when she talks about her mission to help other women who are going through hard times. She thinks that learning how to drive will help her to do that better, and hopes to get a job as a driver for a women's help group. "Those who are fearing about learning, I can teach them about how to take out their fears. There is nothing to fear."
The taxi school also acts as an informal support group for women who may often feel alone. A real sense of sisterhood surrounds those who gathered recently to talk about their ambitions. One woman broke out into a Sikh hymn. Another related her troubles at home - she is in the middle of a divorce from her husband whose family demanded too much dowry. Now, her sister-in-law is trying to claim her parents' entire property, leaving her homeless. Her taxi colleagues urge her to stand up for her rights, that she, too, is entitled to some of the family property.
"We want to work with men. If they think they are very strong, we also want them to know that we are not less than them," said Saini. She softens as she describes how her daughter, the 11-year-old, is thrilled by this new job - not to mention the benefits she will reap having a mother who can drive. But Saini impresses upon her daughter that her route need not be on the road. "She's very small. I'm telling her to study hard, learn her reading and writing. She wants to be a teacher."
Listening to these women, it is apparent that driving a taxi is not just about money or social status. Along with the many fares they will transport around the streets of India in their taxis, they will also carry a constant companion of hope.
