without fear!”—that has perhaps begun to lead to lasting change.
Local and national agencies have poured money into new women’s
safety initiatives. In 2013 the leadership then in power set aside $145 mil-
lion, calling it the Nirbhaya Fund, for measures to boost women’s security.
The current government has promised nearly three times that amount to
start turning eight major cities, including Delhi, into safer, better lit, and
possibly more compassionate places for women.
The first stages of work are under way: In Delhi police now offer free
10-day self-defense programs for women, and they’ve fanned out through
the city to give “doorstep training” to larger groups. In the southern state
of Kerala, all-female police units, the Pink Police, have been assembled
to patrol the streets and respond to crisis calls from women.
Pink is the designated color for most of the women-only services in the
urban public transportation sector. Pink motor rickshaws are for female
passengers; the drivers were all supposed to be women, but because of
a lack of female drivers, now men too can drive these rickshaws after
they receive security clearances by police. Metro trains now include
separate coaches for women. At transit station security checks, women
stand in their own lines, protected from men who might deliberately
press in too close.
I confess to a certain ambivalence about all this. Government-arranged
gender segregation? Is this the only way to begin making women as com-
fortable as men in public spaces? But then I see the hashtag campaigns of
Indian women too, and am cheered: #TakeBackTheNight, a global effort
that banded audacious women in India to walk outside together after
dark. #MeetToSleep, which organized 600 women across the country
last year to safely spend a night sleeping outdoors, as Indian men often
like to do.
It’s hard, changing men’s perception of women as intruders in the public
space, a key part of every women’s safety program. But it’s not impossible.
The song of those Delhi rappers is on YouTube now. Look for Khadar ki
Ladkiyan (Girls of Khadar), and you’ll find it. Watch the women link arms
in the street, gazing into the camera, looking fierce.
Listen to us, loud and clear.
We are brave, we do not fear.
The video’s viewership isn’t huge, but a lot of the admiring comments
are from men. The first time I watched it, I recalled the voices of those Kha-
dar girls—women, really—the first time they rapped for us. We were out
of our minds with delight. We cheered, we whistled. We stamped our feet.
“It’s not like I am always brave,” said one of the rappers, a woman named
Ritu. “Sometimes I am scared too. But I am more angry and outraged.”
Ritu told us this story too: A few of them recently had been standing
together on a Metro train. They caught a man with his cell phone, record-
ing video of them from behind. They weren’t singing or rapping or trying
to get attention, they were just standing on a train car, being female. Other
passengers looked away, pretending not to see what was right in front of
them, so the Khadar girls confronted him. They snatched the man’s phone.
They took their sandals off and hit him. Before the Khadar women could
report him to police, the man jumped off at the next Metro stop and ran
away. This is not ideal, Ritu agrees, but concerns about personal safety
often override feelings of right and wrong. “What would you do when you
know no one cares about what happens to you? You do what feels right
at the moment.” j
TOP
Officers from the
Kerala Pink Police Patrol
respond to a case
of a man trespassing
in a female-only
accommodation in
Thiruvananthapuram.
The all-women units,
which opened in the
city in 2016 and include
32 officers, respond
to reports that involve
women and children
and specialize in cases
requiring counseling
and arbitration.BOTTOM
Women take part in the
monthly Women Walk
at Midnight, in Delhi.
The initiative began in
2013 when one woman
spent 24 hours walking
through the city. Now
the project aims to
reclaim public spaces
after dark and allow
women to explore their
cities without fear. The
event is organized on
Facebook and typically
attracts four to more
than a dozen attendees
each month.Author Nilanjana
Bhowmick is a
New Delhi–based
journalist whose work
focuses on women’s
empowerment and
politics. Photo-
journalist Saumya
Khandelwal, also
based in New Delhi,
focuses on gender and
environmental issues.104 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC