20 years of Delhi Metro: The train that arrived with the promise of liberating women

There is no better manifestation of this chaos than Delhi’s roads. There is noise everywhere, from cars blaring obnoxiously loud music to fights breaking out in the middle of traffic to the infamous horns (seriously, how have people not realised that honking will not make the traffic go any faster?).

All too often, especially for women, it feels like the city is trying to break its residents down. Landlords who won’t take single women as tenants, men staring and coming too close in the street, and areas without adequate lighting — the women in this city have much to be wary about. Then of course, there is Delhi’s reputation as India’s “rape capital”. Many of my friends are scared of moving to Delhi owing to this (one of them has a mother who is scared of even a short visit). And as much as I love Delhi, I see the hesitation.

In this mix, entered the Delhi Metro 20 years ago, offering not just a break from the traffic and the chaos, but a promise of accessible connectivity. For many women, the train services came with an independence so far unavailable to them.

The Metro offers one entire coach just for women, allowing many families to get comfortable with letting women step outside. Assured of affordability and safety (relative, of course— it would be a bit too much to expect that fear would entirely exit our lives at metro stations), many more women in Delhi are seeking educational and professional opportunities beyond the confines of their immediate neighbourhoods.

For my generation, the Metro has become synonymous with leisure pursuits — most of us have explored the city via the colours of the Metro lines. Meeting friends for lunch, having winter picnics, visiting historical places across the city, and partying: The Metro opened up a whole new world for us.

This is why it is the first thing we miss when we leave the city. It speaks to what a well-functioning public transport system can do for women’s mobility. Lack of access to public transport and no provisions for safety have a debilitating effect on women’s freedoms, especially in conservative societies. Laws guaranteeing equality and equal access to employment and resources mean nothing if there is no infrastructure to uphold them.

None of this is to say that Delhi is a safe haven for women since the coming of the Metro. It continues to house threats, more so for minorities and those on the lower rungs of caste and class hierarchies. Every few months, a gruesome case of violence against women comes along to remind us of it, and a lot of these crimes take place in the public space.

However, the Metro has empowered our imaginations — we now know that there is an alternative to the usual state of affairs with women confined to their houses because the outside world is deemed too unsafe. We know to expect better now, and demand it.

This city is ours, with all its chaos and noise, and we will continue claiming it for ourselves, one Metro line at a time.

arushi.bhaskar@indianexpress.com