Women Police On Delhi S Ladies Special Buses Will It Make You Feel Safer

Nidhi Bharadwaj, a marketing professional, says: “I have been taking the bus since five years now to my work in East Delhi from West Delhi. There have been plenty of reforms for women safety that come in all the time but withers away very quick. Sometimes it feels like just a gimmick. You may have more police deployment on Ladies Special Buses but then a lot of time I cannot avoid taking the regular DTC bus, so our safety is still compromised. The only way to ensure we women are actually safe commuting is by ensuring very strict laws, have widespread awareness campaigns. What would also help is if the bus driver and conductor are properly educated on the risks faced by women passengers in their buses and how to identify if they are in danger. They should be instructed on removing any passenger who is trying to make a woman feel uncomfortable and have a centralized helpline number where we can lodge complaints if the bus staff is ignoring a situation”

Aanchal Chaturvedi, a Noida-based makeup artist, says: “I told my friends once that someone in the bus made me fear my safety today and they said you should avoid taking the bus in the evening, which felt even worse to hear. I should be free to decide when to use public transport. It will be better to give us power to be able to take care of a situation ourselves rather than relying on police. You can’t ensure that police personnel is deployed on every single bus, every single route, all day long. These moves are fine but it would help if we have a way to instantly raise an alarm if something untowardly happens. If we feel we are under threat, we should be able to raise an alarm in the bus.”

Shrashti Pandey, a first-year student of Motilal Nehru College, says: “It is a great decision and one that I feel will really make us feel that travelling in DTC buses is not a task and that we don’t have to be on our toes all the time. I usually take the DTC to commute from Shiv Vihar metro station to Baraut and vice versa. And sometimes I also take it within Delhi. I have in the past been in situations while commuting where someone would make you feel unsafe, or I would notice someone standing too close to another female passenger or just with their gaze makes you feel uncomfortable. The part of identifying routes that see more female passengers commute on sounds great to me as it shows this is being done with proper planning and not just randomly.”

Khushi Yadav, a second-year student of Aryabhatta College, says: “I travel late in the evening from Basant Gaon to Palam in the bus and sometimes there are instances where I feel unsafe. During the day there are plenty of female passengers but at night there aren’t as many so there is always this weight that I carry, of trying to be extra careful of my surrounding, who is sitting around me etc. This move just gives me a sense of security knowing that there are steps being taken to enhance safety for women.”

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