Venkadarath Saritha became the first woman to be hired as a DTC bus driver in April 2015. She will continue to be the city’s only female bus driver until August 9, 2021.
Around 4:45 a.m., the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTCSarojini )’s Nagar bus depot comes alive with a group of men entering the grounds and walking directly to the “rest room” to change into their uniforms. Some of them are bus drivers, while others are conductors. The roaring sounds of a Bullet bike entering the depot ten minutes later causes heads to turn.
Saritha, 36, is riding the bike and follows her normal routine of parking her two-wheeler, “not glancing here and there,” and walking directly to the attendance counter to get her daily duty slip.
Her appointment raised hopes that more women would be involved in the running of Delhi’s state-run buses, which transport at least 4.2 million people every day. However, Saritha is still the only female bus driver Delhi has ever had six years later. DTC does employ women as bus conductors and marshals, to be sure. There are 6,750 buses in service in Delhi, with 3,760 owned by DTC and 2,990 operated under the cluster programme.
“Look around, you can see how things are here. It takes a lot of adjusting to fit into this environment. Unlike others, I come wearing the uniform from my home. There is one resting room, which has beds, etc but it is used by the men. After six years of working here, the DTC administration listened to our request, and has now agreed to build a separate resting room for women employees. A defunct room was cleaned and emptied just last month with a bed being placed there, but it remains shut and is still not yet accessible to us,” Saritha said.
One of the many dingy and dark corridors inside the depot leads to the only accessible woman’s washroom. “The staff working in the administration have a different one. But, for me and the other female conductors and bus marshals, it is this single Indian style toilet which is not cleaned frequently. Also, I do not know why, but I have seen men using it too despite having more toilets than us,” she said.
“That is why I do not even use it. I use the toilets in Noida Sector 62, Dhaula Kuan or Nauroji Nagar as they are way cleaner and have more lighting. Even if I have the urge to relieve myself, I have to hold on to it until I reach any of these three places which are on my bus route,” Saritha said, while adjusting herself in the drivers’ seat of an AC bus on route 392 — Mayapuri Chowk to Noida Sector 62.
Data showed that of the total 28,949 employees of DTC, as on Monday, 28,149 (97.2%) were male, while 800 (2.7%) were female. Besides just one woman bus driver, DTC has 15,433 conductors of which 14,702 (95.2%) are men and 731 (4.7%) are women.
