Talk to any Indian woman about travel and transportation in India, and she will have a story to tell; of cat-calls, bottom pinches, lewd gestures and remarks, molestation -- everything that can make living or traveling by yourself feel like a risky enterprise. More so in urban centers, where more and more women are working and living alone.

In an earlier post here (Delhi Behaving Badly) about why the country's capital city was regarded as the most unsafe metropolis for women, we had discussed all possible reasons from power to policing to basic instincts.  We have also discussed the challenges that foreigners -- especially women -- traveling to India may encounter. However,  there may be more New Delhis cropping up across the country: education and urbanization is adding more women to the professional workforce, many of who need safe public transportation to get to their jobs.

But an increase in numbers has not led to the organic change that we expect to see in social attitudes. A testimony to that failure came in the form of this news: Indian Railway ministry (now headed by a woman) has introduced eight new commuter trains exclusively for women in the four largest city centers: New Delhi (north India), Mumbai (west India) , Chennai (south India) and Kolkata (east India). Growing up in Kolkata, I had heard of special public buses only for women that run at certain hours. Also, separation of sets of seats for men and women is common in Indian buses. Other cities -- including Chennai and Chandigarh -- have their own limited women's bus services.  Mumbai commuter trains have ladies-only coaches and a couple ladies-only trains.

But this is for the first time that so many (its only a tiny fraction of the total number, though) commuter trains have been set aside for women across India. The more we educate ourselves and venture out of four walls of the house, the more we seem to need special protection, a.k.a. Ladies Specials. As this NYT reporter who boarded one of these trains puts it (follow the comments on this story for an interesting discussion):

India would seem to be a country where women have shattered the glass ceiling. The country’s most powerful politician, Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress Party, is a woman. The country’s current president, a somewhat ceremonial position, is a woman. [...] India’s Constitution guarantees equal rights for women, while Indian law stipulates equal pay and punishment for sexual harassment.

But the reality is very different for the average working woman, many analysts say.

I will steer clear of discussing the practical merits of running entire trains for women (unless they too turn out to be as overcrowded as general trains) and the impact it will have on women who choose to travel in general trains.

I wonder though, why we still need this kind of segregation to be safe.

I have traveled in overcrowded buses and trains in New Delhi and New York. I did not particularly enjoy the fight for foot-space, the constant jostling, or the stepping on sore toes and fragile tempers, but I don't complain -- that's part of work life and many men are sweating it out just as much.
But what bothered me in India was that crowd created a convenient excuse for some men to feel you up, touch you, pinch your bottom, tweak your breasts or pass slimy comments. Sometimes, it wasn't even that crowded. Complain, and pat comes the answer: "It's so crowded madam." A high-school teacher once chidingly joked about such men who, for some inexplicable reason, seem unable to keep their balance in public transportation: she called them "the swaying palm trees" ready to land on you or brush against you at the slightest provocation.

Now, there has been the occasional complaint that some women turn the slightest pushing and shoving into a sexual harassment issue. Even if we cut out the cases where women have been too touchy, is it that hard to distinguish between a neutral nudge and a bottom squeeze? Does "excuse me" sound anything like "nice tits"? Not in any of the languages I speak.

Agelessbonding was traveling with her daughter-in-law on an overnight train when they were jolted awake by a middle-aged woman screaming: some boy had decided to bend over her and grab her breasts, probably assuming that she, like other commuters, was fast asleep. The boy escaped. The coach guard was nowhere to be found. Stunned by this experience, Agelessbonding wonders :

Is this a manifestation of what can happen if young people do not have opportunities to interact with the opposite sex in a healthy way?
Is this the result of the extremes of repression as a result of the increasing moral policing in the system?
Is this perverted fascination with the female anatomy a result of the refusal to impart sex education to young people?
[...]
This is definitely not lack of education. This is a serious psychological problem, symptom of a mental illness - this desperate need to feel a female's body even for a few seconds in a public place. Why is this happening to our youth in our 'culture' with its high 'moral' standards and with the entire 'system' (education, politics, society and police) working over-time passing laws to curb women's rights in a bid to ensure that these standards are not violated?
And talking about the system, where was the guard on duty?

Even if we dismiss this as a odd case of sexual perversion, it is still symptomatic of a deeper attitude problem. After all, the huge strides that women have made have changed and affected us more than they have men. Maybe for a lot of men it has been more of an adjustment of status, something that is playing out rather shakily in India.

Let's go back to the case of New Delhi, which is now gearing up for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Not only is it struggling to put the basic infrastructure together, it's taking a cue from other host countries and trying to get its citizens to behave. One of their major worries remains how the city treats its women. Ketaki Gokhale -- whose 'Delhi rules for women' echoes my sentiments in the previous post on this issue -- writes of this problem at WSJ: 

City leaders are trying to prep Delhi for the masses of summer visitors who may descend on India's capital in shorts and bikini tops and expect – perhaps naively – to be treated with the same nonchalance as in other cosmopolitan capitals. [...]

Some who study the city's culture are skeptical. Scholars have many ideas as to why the streets of Delhi are so unsafe for women—wide-ranging theories about the "purdah" culture (the seclusion of women) of northern India, and the region's history of war and conquest, with all its attendant raping and pillaging.
[...] Madhulika Mohta, a young lawyer with the Delhi Commission for Women, says that even if enforcement of eve teasing laws is improved, sexual harassment is too deeply-rooted in Delhi culture to disappear.

Maybe more policing will help. Maybe leaders could cut out their defensive, unsolicited advice about  "adventurous" or "unchaperoned" women risking it at night, and focus on making the city safer for all.

But at the end of the day, it is a process of slow churning. As an anonymous Indian blogger on No Gender Inequality! writes, a lot has to do with conscious and unconscious "conditioning". Mothers (and sisters) can do a lot to create a new generation of fair-minded children -- sensitizing boys toward a equal society and preparing girls for the same. In this fascinating post, she recounts a story about a pact that she and a college friend had made  to raise their daughters unconventionally and with full freedom. She didn't have daughters but chose to raise her sons with no prejudice. But years later she was shocked to find her friend had not quite kept the pact (the friend had a son and a daughter) and had come around to accepting that boys will be boys and girls must adjust. I am quoting copiously here:

Visiting her I noticed that she called her daughter to serve the guests a cold drink or for help in the kitchen. In my own house, my boys would serve cold drinks to the guests. Was it because I did not have a daughter, I asked myself. I admitted, perhaps out of habit, that “conditioning,” even I would have been tempted to call my daughter, if I had one, for help. But then breaking that “conditioning” is what we had talked about so passionately.
[...]
How difficult it is to come out of ‘conditioned’ thinking? Washing, cooking, laying the table, serving guests, sweeping, mopping are all woman’s work! I really don’t know how much I have succeeded in impressing my own children about gender equality. After all they live in the same society and see the difference in treatment meted out to women all around them. But I can say that I have tried my best and on occasions have argued my point with vehemence when they have unconsciously repeated ‘conditioned’ remarks heard elsewhere. I hope when the time comes, they treat their spouses the right way. But no matter, if they don’t, they have me to reckon with!

More power to such mothers! Things can change. One family at a time.

More on women and travel:
Sumitra Senapaty runs WoW, Women on Wanderlust, an exclusive female travelllers group
Dewdrop on traveling by Mumbai trains