20 years of Delhi Metro: An era of safer, gender-sensitive transport

One recent December night, a little after 9pm, Nisha Bhatnagar, 28, is finally ready to leave her office in south Delhi’s Nehru Place. Most of her colleagues at the private finance company where she works have left for the day, but Bhatnagar stayed back to complete a presentation. Work done, she switches off her computer, packs her back, and rushes to the elevator.

The roads are deserted. There are a few security guards around, and faint light from the stove of a nearby tea stall which is also wrapping up for the day, but Bhatnagar isn’t worried — although, like other women in India’s capital, she never lets her guard down, walking fast, looking over her shoulder at times. It takes five minutes of brisk walking to her destination, which she can now see, the brightly lit Nehru Enclave Metro station. She can hear the announcements and speeds up.

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It wasn’t always this way.

A 2021 study by researchers from Delhi’s Centre for Gender Studies, Institute for Human Development, surveyed 426 women in the age group of 20-65 and found that 47.6% of the respondents were regular Metro riders, and that another 28.3% used it occasionally.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) does not count passengers by gender, but the study estimated that post the Covid-19 pandemic, at least 33% of Metro’s passengers were women. Interestingly, the study also pointed that women were more likely to use the Metro if the duration of commute increased. For instance, 87.1% women travellers whose commute was longer than an hour used the Metro regularly as opposed to only 17% whose travel time was 30 minutes or less, the study showed.

“It (the Delhi Metro) has ushered in a new era in the sphere of gender-sensitive means of mass transit through specific provisions for safety of women passengers, like reserved seats for women in every coach; women CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) staff for frisking of female passengers; CCTV surveillance at stations, etc. Introduction of an exclusive lady’s coach was an additional important measure which received public applaud,” the study said.

Bhatnagar agrees.

“Till a few years back, when the Metro had not come to this area, I would never stay in office till late. You cannot rely on autorickshaws or buses and how often can you take a private cab? The Metro has come to the rescue for working women. “

It isn’t just working women who have benefited from the Delhi Metro, which started services on December 25, 2002.

Bridge to Delhi’s peripheries

In Ghummenhera, an urban village on the south-western periphery of Delhi, until a few years ago, most homes were reluctant if the women in their family studied past Class 12, simply because there were no colleges nearby, and no safe way to get to those that were some distance away. There was no bus service, and the nearest Metro station was Dwarka, at least 15km away.

Most ended up in distance learning programmes.

In 2019, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) launched the Grey Line, a 5-km stretch connecting Najafgarh and nearby areas to the Blue Line (Dwarka Sector 21 to Vaishali/Noida Electronic City), things changed. This might be the shortest connection of the Delhi Metro, but for the residents of Najafgarh villages this link has proved invaluable.

“After the Covid lockdown lifted, in 2021, some villages in the area started private buses till the Metro station. Those who benefitted the most from this are young women who have to travel to and back from their colleges and offices. Buses start around 7.30am and are available every hour till 11am, then again from 5pm to 9pm,” said Poonam, who goes by a single name, a resident of Ghummenhera Village and a second year undergraduate student at the Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences near Dwarka.

According to Poonam, there are eight students from her neighbourhood enrolled in different courses in the same college and they often travel together in the Metro.

In 2018, Girija Borker, economist (development research group) at World Bank said in a study titled “Perceived risk of street harassment and college choice of women in Delhi” that women were willing to choose a college in the bottom half of the quality distribution over a college in the top 20%, for a commute that was perceived to be safer, by one standard deviation.

Men, in contrast were only willing to go from a top 20% college, to a top 25% college for the same increase in (one standard deviation) perceived travel safety.

“One standard deviation of perceived safety while walking is equivalent to a 3.1% decrease in the rapes reported annually,” the study said.

“My analysis shows that affecting women’s safety preferences has the same effect on closing the gender gap in higher education as the first-best policy, and it is more effective than subsidising travel by safer modes. This suggests that programmes that empower women are one of the most effective and sustainable approaches to reducing the costs of street harassment,” Borker said.

Shradha Sriniwas, 30, who graduated from Delhi University’s Indraprastha College for Women in 2012 and is currently a guest lecturer at DU, agrees with Borker’s analysis. She said a major factor for choosing Indraprastha was the Metro connectivity. Even though she scored enough to get admission at higher-ranked colleges such as Jesus and Mary College and Lady Shri Ram College, connectivity was a huge concern for her family.

“My family used to live in Mayur Vihar Phase 3 at the time and my father used to drop me at the Metro station every morning. Metro connectivity was a huge factor for selecting IP College. Many of my friends used to drive to the better ranked women’s colleges that were off-campus but I did not have the luxury,” said Sriniwas.

There are several reasons why women feel safer on the Metro.

One, the dedicated coaches; two, a constant presence of police; three, round-the-clock surveillance.

Safety steps outside stations too

But what happens at the end of the journey when women have to step out of the Metro premises?

Referring to a recent incident where a flasher in a Metro station was identified and arrested, Sumegha Nagpal, a 25-year-old metro commuter, who travels from east Delhi’s Dilshad Garden to central Delhi’s Connaught Place for work, said: “If you ever were to experience a similar incident at a bus stop or anywhere else in the city, no one will come to help you and if you try to contact the police, they will also not be reachable. The prompt action in that situation happened only because it happened in the Metro.”

While most women claimed to feel safe within the Metro network, many also demanded similar facilities once they step out of stations.

“The coming of the Metro has improved the chances of women in several areas by increasing their mobility ambit, but the metro network is not representative of the entire city. What happens when women step out of stations? The roads are still dark, there is no last mile connectivity and miscreants still lurk after dark. A lot still needs to be done to ensure that the city as a whole is made safe for women,” said women’s rights activist Ranjana Kumari.

Prachi Yadav, 17, regularly commutes from her coaching centre in south Delhi’s Munirka to her residence in Palam. She was only seven, and far too young to know what was happening, when the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student jolted the entire nation. The incident happened on a bus between Munirka and Palam.

“I do not recall much from the incident and what followed immediately, but we followed the trial of the convicts and my parents or older sister telling me to be careful while out,” she said.

Standing outside the Munirka Metro station, barely a few metres away from the bus stop from where the 23-year-old boarded the bus where she was raped on December 16 a decade ago, Yadav points to groups of young women laughing, chatting and walking in and out of the station gates.

“I do not know how the situation was here when there was no Metro in 2012, but maybe if we had a similar setup, perhaps she would have reached home safe.”

After a 40-minute ride , Bhatnagar alights at the Janakpuri station in West Delhi. She says she spends her commute back browsing her phone, even napping, “without worrying if I will get home safe.”