In early 2019, I had gone to register my car papers at the motor vehicles office in Noida. As I stood waiting for a man to photocopy my documents, I became aware of the stares of people around me. This was, of course, nothing I was not used to, but these stares were slightly different, more uncomfortable, more in my face. I looked up and looked around slowly바카라all I could see were men, men, and more men. In that courtyard of easily a few hundred men, I was the only woman or at least the only one unaccompanied by a man. I took a picture of the courtyard and when I looked at it later, I was amazed. We often talk about women missing from our public spaces but to see it captured was a different feeling altogether.
Often, when I am in a car driven by a female friend, male drivers honk, try to corner the car바카라for them it바카라s a sport, to see us flustered and scared, to push us back into our homes. Ask any woman who drives, especially in North India, she will have a similar story to tell. I have never wandered through the streets like I often see men doing. My relationship with the streets is strictly functional, as I believe is the case with most other women. We try to go from point A to point B, getting our work done without grabbing too much attention.
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In early February 2018, in a small room in Madanpur Khadar, a resettlement colony in the Indian capital, a group of young girls were discussing their participation in a year-long project by the non-profit organization Jagori called Aana-Jaana (Comings and Goings) with a study group from abroad. As part of the project, the girls had recorded their daily struggles in negotiating a hostile public space on a closed WhatsApp group.
바카라Sheher (city) where no one listens to you바카라, an entry read; a freestyle hip-hop song with over 40,000 views on YouTube followed the entry. That morning, they performed it for the study group.
바카라Girls in this city have a tough life바카라but you cannot scare us away from anymore,바카라 sang the diminutive Khadar ki Ladkiyan (Girls of Khadar), in their knock-off jeans and long synthetic tops. Their anger was quiet but palpable.
바카라More power to you sister,바카라 they spat out as they punched and slashed the air, swaying to the beats of finger snaps and knuckle raps.
But staking a claim to the city in real-time has not been easy.
A Save the Children report in 2018 on safety in public spaces for Indian girls found that one in three adolescent girls was scared of traversing the narrow by-lanes of their localities, as well as the road to go to school or the local market. Nearly three in five girls reported feeling unsafe in overcrowded public spaces. Over one in every four adolescent girls perceived the threat of being physically assaulted, including getting raped, while venturing into public spaces, while one in three expected to be inappropriately touched or even stalked.
바카라Khadar ki Ladkiyan바카라 was part of a wider project titled 바카라Gendering the Smart City바카라 funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, and headed by Ayona Datta, a professor of Human Geography at University College London. The project aimed to understand how women used technology and how that technology impacted the ways in which they negotiated their homes and cities on a daily basis. The participants were from Madanpur Khadar, a resettlement colony in Delhi. Jagori, a feminist NGO in Delhi, and Safetipin, a well-known ICT social enterprise, partnered with Datta on this project.
Datta describes the Khadar girls as 바카라urban millennials, who are living the paradox of India바카라s digital revolution in an urban age바카라. They are avid users of the mobile phone, and active on social media through which they create solidarities, friendships, and support networks바카라 within these paradoxes they emerge as young, millennial, gendered citizens straddling the 바카라new바카라 and 바카라old바카라 India, eager to speak, but held back.바카라 Their song, she continues, 바카라brings to light the opportunities and challenges of navigating the city as these women leave home to pursue paid work and education, and are simultaneously constrained by the boundaries of traditional gender roles.바카라
A very important aspect of the everyday lives of the Khadar girls is violence바카라not just sexual, but also structural. In their song the girls reiterate that the state knows 바카라we need better roads, they know we need public transport. They know we need water and toilets. They know we need safe streets. It바카라s not a lack of knowledge that is the problem, rather a lack of attention.바카라
바카라The song was really about using technology and not necessarily in the way that the smart city expects you to바카라. Like, you know, clicking on Facebook likes and Twitter likes and doing the surveys circulated by the government, but using technology in a way to draw attention and mobilize and advocate about continuing intergenerational problems around lack of infrastructure, gender-based violence, and so on,바카라 Datta told me in 2020.
The impact of the song had left Datta amazed. 바카라We had not even thought of shooting a video initially but the idea came from the girls,바카라 Datta remembered.
The girls had kept it a secret from their parents during the shoot, for the fear that they would not be allowed to take part in the project because dancing and singing were not considered appropriate. However, after the video went live, to everyone바카라s surprise, many parents sent it to their extended families back home.
바카라It made us feel free바카라we were able to put into words the anger we feel at the fear we feel in a city where we were born,바카라 said Ritu, one of the Khadar girls. 바카라Why do we have to run back home after school or work? Why can바카라t we hang out like the boys or men do in public squares?바카라
Because when the public space is hostile, we have no choice but to accept this misogynistic definition of a woman바카라s rightful place in society.
In 2012, a young student, Jyoti Singh, was raped inside a moving bus by six men and then thrown on the streets to die. Her parents had migrated to New Delhi from a small village in Uttar Pradesh in search of a better life for their children. Her father worked as a loader at the Delhi airport and sold his ancestral land to fund her education. The tragedy that befell her brought focus to the struggles of this new generation of underprivileged girls and women, empowered by education, having to step out to work to substantiate the family income. Her gruesome rape and murder had underlined the imminent need for making public spaces safer for women. Singh was the same age as the Khadar girls when she was murdered and came from a similar socio-economic background.
바카라When we talk about safety, we are not just talking about violence. It is to remove fear,바카라 Kalpana Vishwanath, a sociologist and urban safety and gender rights activist said in an address to the International Association of Women in Radio and Television in September 2015. Citing the example of Delhi, she had added that 바카라there is a huge amount of fear, probably higher than the actual expression of violence. And our effort is to remove that fear.바카라
Vishwanath, co-founder and CEO of Safetipin, a social enterprise that uses data and technology to build safer, more inclusive smart cities, held that safety was not just the experience of violence, it바카라s the fear of violence that makes women more dependent on men for protection, or makes them restrict their mobility. She had also rightly pointed out that when women are perceived as victims, the narrative then becomes that of protection rather than rights. 바카라And we are saying safety is a right, without fear of violence.바카라
바카라Cities are not well planned; they are not gender-inclusive. Do we have to ask whether we are planning cities for gender inclusion? Are we planning more transport facilities? Are the places well-lit? We need to address a lot of stakeholders, not only the police. We need to talk to urban planners, municipalities, and local governments to build safer cities,바카라 she said. 바카라Instead of a top-down model where city planners decide. We should build cities that local people want, women want. A safe city, where one can live without fear.바카라
(Excerpted from Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman바카라s Burden by Nilanjana Bhowmick (pp 272, Rs 699), with permission from Aleph Book Company)
(Nilanjana Bhowmick has been a journalist for more than twenty-one years and has won three international awards for her reports on gender and development. )
