21/11/2013
What women in Bangalore want: Safety, cleanliness and freedom
Bangalore is safe, but not safe enough. At least, that seems to be what the majority of women living in the city believe, based on a study commissioned by The Times of India. The study, which is based on a survey of 900 women conducted by IMRB in six cities across the country, looked at various issues faced by women, beginning with safety, services available, gender issues at home and the workplace, health and financial issues. It shows that while women feel relatively safer in Bangalore compared to other cities, in absolute terms, opinions are divided. An overwhelming 64% of the city's women said they do not feel safe in the city after sunset, and only 17% said they felt safe "at any time of the day."
Some parts of the city are perceived to be less safe than others. The Marathahalli Ring Road area, for instance, is perceived to be either "unsafe for women" or "very unsafe for women" by more than a third of those surveyed. "The stretch of Outer Ring Road between Marathahalli and Bellandur, where I live, is definitely underlit and possibly unsafe. The few times I've had to wait alone at Marathahalli junction for a bus or auto haven't been pleasant," says Ankita Sharma, who works in an HR firm in Brookefield and travels by public transport. Sharma says there are no street lights in this area and the operators of private vehicles soliciting passengers can get rude and hostile. "After the Delhi r**e incident, I became especially wary of these private vehicles. I don't know if any of them have proper licenses and whether the police keeps an eye on them," she adds.
Other areas where women felt "unsafe" or "very unsafe" included Kengeri Road and the stretch between BEL Road and Vidyaranyapura. Even the morning stroll, so long a part of the Bangalorean's day, seems to have become fraught. More than half the women (53%) IMRB spoke to felt unsafe during their morning walks. An increasing number of women feel so insecure that they have begun contemplating carrying a weapon - 42% of the respondents said that they "felt the need to carry a weapon/article of self-defence". This seems to be part of a larger national trend. Despite a larger percentage of women feeling safer in Mumbai, 63% of Mumbai women wished that they were armed as did a majority of women from Pune and Calcutta. The majority of respondents from Chennai and, astonishingly, Delhi, felt they did not need articles of self-defence.
A quarter of the women surveyed have faced offensive behaviour on the streets of Bangalore, but only half of them reported the behaviour to the police. "If you approach a policeman saying someone is harassing you, they will advise you to let it go. You'll be told 'yake galate madabeku?' And it's not just the police - the blame-the-victim culture is rampant. People will point fingers at a woman's behavior and clothes while finding excuses for men - calling it high spirits or 'harmless fun'," says women's rights activist Sharanya Hegde of the Mahila Dakshatha Samithi. "For many policemen, street sexual harassment is a 'silly' matter. It's not serious. They should understand that men who get away with this gain the confidence to commit bigger crimes against women, like r**es or acid attacks," asserts Hegde.
Only one city had fewer respondents who faced lewd behaviour on city streets, Pune, where one in 10 women experienced "misbehaviour". In Bangalore, 60% said they felt safer in company. Malls and multiplexes are perceived as being safer than other public spaces like parks: 76% of the surveyed felt secure in malls and multiplexes, day or night, as against 38% who felt safe in open public areas like parks or gardens.
Basic services for women in public areas remain a concern, with toilet facilities topping the list. Women are more comfortable with other aspects of Bangalore infrastructure, like lighting and roads. They are divided over the quality of drinking water and united over the city's cleanliness or lack of it. The verdict that the place stinks is hardly surprising, given the issues Bangalore has with garbage.
Public transport, specifically bus transport, is the preferred form of transportation for Bangalore women as 53% of women said they prefer buses, followed by 36% who use their own vehicles. By and large, the experience women face with public transportation (buses and autorickshaws) is mostly positive, with one exception - autodrivers refusing custom to prospective passengers in an apparently whimsical manner. But a majority of women support measures like random checks, enforced ladies' seating and plain clothes women policemen on buses.
