Uttar Pradesh is making strident moves to enable women to drive e-rickshaws

Here's a look at how this is changing the women's lives

Her coyness transforms into a confident posture as Lalita Gautam settles down in the driver’s seat of her e-rickshaw for another day on the busy roads of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. The 28-year-old is part of a growing tribe of sprightly, young women e-rickshaw drivers who are challenging gender stereotypes in the state, with fortitude and a pinch of attitude.

Gautam’s case is special for being the first woman in the state to receive an e-rickshaw driving licence in 2015. She efficiently balances her strenuous days on the road with her role as a mother. Her two daughters are aged six and seven.

Today, e-rickshaws are on the rise in major UP towns, aided by easy loans and their growing popularity with daily commuters due to the cheap fares and last-mile connectivity they offer. The entry of women e-rickshaw drivers has served as the perfect icing on the cake, proving to be a viable employment option for the more enterprising among the underprivileged women.

Compared to other vocations for the unlettered or lesser-educated, plying e-rickshaws is more lucrative considering it could, depending on the work hours, generate Rs 500-1,000 a day, a handsome amount considering alternative unorganised jobs would fetch monthly wages of less than Rs 5,000 — maybe even lesser for women.

Gautam is one of several of her peers associated with Hamsafar, a non-government organisation working closely with victims of domestic violence. She was part of the first batch of women e-rickshaw drivers that Hamsafar had constituted under its “Green City, Safe City” transport programme. Later, the previous government, led by Akhilesh Yadav, had gifted the NGO with free e-rickshaws on International Women’s Day.

Hamsafar had tied up with Maruti Driving School to train selected candidates. These women were also taught basic motor repair, communication skills and the ability to read maps. In the beginning, about 100 women had enrolled for the programme, though most of them dropped out soon after. This left only about 15 in the first batch, according to Mamta, a resource executive with Hamsafar. Later, some of the women who received driving lessons were also deployed to ply garbage pick-up vans under the “green city” project.

Most of these women e-rickshaw drivers are aged between 25 and 40. “These women tend to their children singlehandedly while eking out a living with dignity, hard work and optimism,” says Mamta. At the moment, though, these women do not drive during the late hours for safety reasons. “And getting a driving licence for these women from the regional transport office still remains a tedious task owing to gender prejudices,” she adds.

Like Gautam, Pushpa Nishad, Meera and 40-year-old Rasheeda are also proficient e-rickshaw drivers. “Earlier, people used to give strange glances when they saw a woman driving an e-rickshaw. There were occasional catcalls by fellow male e-rickshaw drivers, too, but these attitudes are slowly changing. Passengers have realised that we are to be respected as professionals,” she says. The Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation has engaged a green urban mobility company to ply e-rickshaws on feeder routes between Metro stations. Women drivers will soon be employed on these routes, too. These Metro feeder services are now proposed for other cities as well, including Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Varanasi. This could potentially enrich avenues for women e-rickshaw drivers in the future.

While Lucknow has taken the lead in this initiative, other towns such as Allahabad are not far behind. SMV Green Solutions, an Allahabad-based startup, has been working for the past eight years with the cycle rickshaw community to provide affordable, clean and safe urban mobility. The start-up is equally focused on empowering women as micro-entrepreneurs, owners and drivers of clean-energy e-rickshaws. SMV’s Vahini Project is geared towards generating wealth for women, but also enabling them with the confidence to step out of their homes and take on a rather unconventional vocation.

Joining the league of the private sector in empowering women, the public sector behemoth, National Thermal Power Corporation, distributed e-rickshaws to women in March to nudge them towards self-employment. Meanwhile, Hamsafar is training a fresh batch of women e-rickshaw drivers, who are determined to make UP more gender balanced.