Students of a Women’s college in Kolkata during a protest against the rape and murder of a doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital. (Express Photo by Partha Paul)
I have lived in big cities all my life, of which the past 36 years have been in and around Delhi. When I moved to Delhi, I spent the first month taking the bus number 620 from Hauz Khas bus stand to Connaught Place through a scenic route and then spent hours walking around CP and the neighbouring streets — my period of being a flaneur much before I knew the meaning of the term! This was my way of engaging with the city and the people. But I always made sure that I took the bus back before it became too crowded or before dark. As women, we unconsciously make decisions about how we move around all the time. It becomes second nature, like looking over your shoulder on an empty street or stepping off the pavement if you see a group of men walking towards you. The one time I was stuck after dark, I realised how different the city felt and how my gait had completely changed.
Several years later I became deeply involved in addressing the safety of women in the city through my work. Along with many others, I began recognising and articulating how unfriendly our streets and public spaces are for women. Public spaces are a part of everyone’s life to lesser or greater degrees. All women must navigate the city in different ways. Walking to school, taking a bus to college, dropping a child off at school, going to work or the market, playing and socialising in parks, waiting at bus stops, eating at food stalls — these are different elements of our lives in cities.
We discovered the safety audit as a way of seeing our city and visioning what we wanted. Groups of women would walk around different areas and at different times to assess why and where we feel safer or less safe because of lighting, the presence of people, activity in the street, good amenities and the like. These safety audit findings were then shared with city authorities for improvement. Beyond the findings, it was a liberating experience for many of the women who had never been out at night without men. Just the act of walking a street at night with a group of women became a political statement of access and rights.
Over the years, this work and the momentum on the issue led to many interventions towards addressing women’s safety and mobility, including women-only transport, gender training for drivers and conductors, messaging in buses and trains, campaigns, improved lighting, new laws, standard operating procedures for police as well as civil society actions like “reclaim the night”. I remember a campaign for safety in metros cleverly titled “Mend the gap”. Safety pins gave way to pepper sprays and digital tools such as the Safetipin app which provided women digital resources on safety.
There have been several heinous crimes which made the front page, including the infamous Jessica Lall case in 1999 where a young woman was murdered for refusing to serve a drink after hours, the shooting of a young college student in broad daylight in 2011 by a man who had been stalking her and the rape of a woman by a cab driver in 2014. The December 2012 gangrape rocked our city and brought the issue of sexual assault into our drawing rooms, schools, colleges and workplaces.
The instinctive reaction to a violent incident is to control women’s mobility. Families and society put the burden of safety on women themselves, often under the guise of protection. This will not make the world a safer place for us. We must continue to occupy public spaces and refuse invisibility if our struggle is for equality, rights and dignity.
Most women in this city have stories about fear, sexual harassment, turning down opportunities and limiting their mobility. But that does not prevent them from asserting their rights to enjoy what the city has to offer, from educational institutions to work opportunities and lots of great public spaces. Violent incidents in cities often impact women’s right to make choices about their own lives.
The recent rape and murder of a young doctor in Kolkata has brought back many of these memories. The demand for justice and safe workspaces is being strongly articulated. Kolkata, unlike Delhi, has a reputation of being a safer city for women. There is outrage across the board, protests across the country and strong mobilisation by diverse groups of people in the city. The demand for justice in this case must be accompanied by changes to our institutions to recognise the needs of all women to live with dignity. We need a new imagination of our cities that embraces diversity and prioritises care.
Our cities are chaotic, confusing and inviting at the same time. Living in a city is not just about a job or education, but also many other joys and disappointments. A city is a tapestry of our experiences from which memories are forged. Women of all ages, classes and from all over the country continue to navigate the city, build lives and homes for themselves, make friends, fall in love and discover themselves by living every day.
The writer is the co-founder and CEO of Safetipin and an expert on gender and urbanisation
