It’s three months into her driving course and Zahida is still getting used to her new uniform - navy blue trousers with a matching zip jacket. As the 19-year-old from a slum cluster in South Delhi watches her instructor demonstrate how to check tyre pressure to her class, Zahida, almost involuntarily, pulls at her clothing.
“I can’t help it,” she smiles. “In my community, girls are not allowed to wear boys’ clothes. I grew up wearing long and loose-fitting shalwar kameez. This is still new to me.”
Despite her mild discomfort, Zahida is aware she’s breaking several taboos. As a girl and a Dalit Muslim – considered the lowest level in India’s deeply entrenched caste hierarchy – she is training for a new life.
The high school graduate is enrolled in a government pilot scheme launched last year in New Delhi, training young women to drive with a view to becoming taxi drivers. The course is part of a wider national programme to improve the lives of children like Zahida, born into families of sanitation workers and manual scavengers.
The scheme is run by the NSKFDC, a national agency that provides training and financial support, and 450 young women from three marginalised neighbourhoods in the capital were selected for training. During the seven-month programme, they are given instruction in commercial driving as well as classes in English language and self-defence. They receive a stipend of 1,500 rupees (£15) a month.
After the training, the women will be able to work as drivers and apply for a commercial licence after a year.
In May, the national agency signed an agreement with Uber and Ola, an Indian app-based cab service, to employ the women once they receive their commercial driving licences.
“Up until a few months ago wearing such clothes or driving cars were things I could only dream of. My mother is a sanitation worker. Her income can barely support our large family. After high school my education stopped and I stayed at home doing odd stitching jobs until I heard about the scheme,” says Zahida, the oldest of nine children.
At first it was hard to convince her family, Zahida says, but the prospect of receiving a stipend helped change her mother’s mind.
Twenty-year-old Sonia Kumari knew convincing the men in her family to allow her to take part in the scheme would be an uphill task.
“Everyone was fiercely opposed to it. ‘How can a girl become a taxi driver?’ my father objected. But I fought back. I threatened to leave the house. I told them this was the best way I could help the family as well as do something respectable,” says Kumari, from JJ Colony, another slum cluster near Dwarka in New Delhi.
“I want to have a life of dignity. I was called names at school,” she says. “I don’t want to end up like my mother or the other women from our community. I hate what they do. It’s degrading.”
Despite being banned in 1993, the practice of manual scavenging in India continues. According to Jan Sahas, a grassroots organisation that has supported more than 20,000 manual scavengers since 2003, there are still up to 1 million workers across the country engaged in the job of cleaning dry latrines.
In 2013 the Indian government passed another law prohibiting and criminalising the employment of manual scavengers. But in several states, and in New Delhi, authorities have failed to fully eradicate the practice.
“Even in big cities like Delhi, youth from scavenging communities face widespread prejudice and stigma. In several instances they have had to go back to their parents’ profession after failing to find good economic opportunities,” says Jan Sahas’ co-founder Ashif Shaikh.
Although Shaikh thinks the driver training pilot scheme looks promising he says it needs to be widened out. “This initiative, if expanded to other states, can go a long way in changing attitudes in the conservative Dalit communities. But given the scale of the problem, the current government targets are just a drop in the ocean. There are a million scavengers out there, and 95% of them are women.”
Getting a job after the course is also an issue. Surabhi Singh, 21, from Mangolpuri, started looking for jobs as soon as she graduated six weeks ago. “I am a bit worried because I haven’t driven since finishing the course. My family doesn’t have a car. None of us does. Without access to a car how do I practise? A long gap will affect my confidence on the road and that really worries me.”
Zahida and Kumari have now finished their course and are considering their options. They both want to get their commercial driving licences, but in the meantime may try to get some driving experience with Sakha cabs, a female-driver taxi hire service established by the Azad Foundation, an NGO devoted to empowering underprivileged women.
The director of the Centre for Social Research (CSR), Ranjana Kumari, thinks the scheme is a big leap for girls in a community where gender stereotypes are even harder to break.
“It’s not the first time women are being trained to drive taxis in India. But this gives upward social mobility to a class of women who, even in their own Dalit communities, have been at the bottom of system,” she says.
“Being a taxi driver has the potential to break both caste and gender barriers. In my view driving a cab will empower these girls in a way that no other vocation such as basket weaving, tailoring or candle-making ever can,” she adds.
