Elections for the Delhi Legislative Assembly are round the corner. Gender identity has become a category to reckon with therein. Therefore, a specific trend of political parties for elections during contemporary times has been to offer freebies and incentives for the mahila labharthis, women beneficiaries, whose vote percentage has been on the rise with each successive poll. The substantiated policies of the incumbent parties needs to be critically appraised while considering their bag of gift offerings.
The decade long rule of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi also necessitates a critique/audit in this regard. Social media abounds with captivating jargons as propaganda strategies of AAP to attract the voters’ attention. Slogans and rhetoric as bhai ho toh Kejriwal jaisa, beta ho toh Kejriwal jaisa – are being raised to render a familial character to the AAP campaigning. Which dignified, civilized family would allow and tolerate assaults on its women? Ek neta jiski ladai ek behtar bhavishya aur ek sashakt samaj ke liye! projects the AAP leader as a messiah! Can we indeed look forward to a sashakt samaj when even a former Chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) and a sitting Member of Parliament representing the AAP itself was brutally assaulted, criminally intimidated and her modesty outraged in then Chief Minister Kejriwal’s official residence by his close aide, while the CM was present within the premises? Not a word of condemnation or any rectifying measures by the CM Kejriwal followed the incident, indicating his silent approval and an implicit conspiracy. Same was the stance of senior AAP leaders including present CM Atishi, who couldn’t lend support for honour of a woman and her fellow party member.
Under such circumstances, is Delhi a safe haven for the lay women when their leaders are unsafe? What type of family compositions, feminine dignity, promising future and enabling sections AAP is committed to offer us?
AAP government in December 2024 has launched the Mukhyamantri Mahila Samman scheme providing Rs. 2100 to eligible women beneficiaries monthly. To introduce the scheme and initiate registration Kejriwal and CM Atishi even visited Delhi neighborhoods. However, freebies of Rs. 2100 cannot ensure Mahila Samman as pretentiously claimed if women have to bear assaults and threats on their physical, psychological, financial and emotional selves, leaving them more vulnerable than ever before, more so when it is happening under the protective umbrella of self-proclaimed ideal bhai and beta. Even the current CM, herself a woman, failed to empathize with the women woes, sans any political motivation. The ground realities of the seemingly alluring promises, fake propaganda, insecure environs prevailing in the state expose the façade created by the AAP’s apex leadership. Forget better future the current present has been grim under layers of their unethical, callous, insensitive, unsafe, and exclusivist, discriminatory administration.
AAP government has been offering free rides with ‘Pink Ticket’ scheme to all women in DTC and cluster buses since 2019. However, the city’s public transport system is a glaring instance of unsafe scenario for women wherein the challenges are not just physical but psychological and emotional too. The parochial behaviour encountered by the female bus commuter manifest their everyday humiliations. A protest staged by ‘Power The Pedal’ community near Central Secretariat in October 2023 raised voice for equality and safety for women commuters in public buses. A survey report entitled ‘Halt for women bus users in Delhi’ conducted by NGO Greenpeace India had an astounding 82% surveyed women bus users sharing instances of buses not stopping for them at designated bus stops, while 52% respondents shared experiences of either discrimination or derogatory comments because of their free rider status.
In 2015 AAP claimed the initiative of introducing a Task Force of Bus Marshals as civil defence volunteers, to revitalize Delhi’s safety landscape for women in public transport. Kejriwal projected himself as a populist guardian figure when he announced “Starting tomorrow, every bus in Delhi will have a bus marshal to safeguard women”. However, the scheme, eventually aborted amidst AAP’s usual blame game politics and unaccountability, reeked another saga of broken promise, hypocrisy and political opportunism. Unpaid since April 2023, the marshal service was eventually rolled back from October 2023, rendering not only the women travelers’ safety perilous but aggravating the marshals’ own woes amidst challenges of survival, some even succumbing to their life, lamenting the AAP CM’s 2019 hollow promise of permanent employment and secure future. The reaction remains one of despondency: “We were promised permanent jobs and basic benefits, but now, after using our services, we’ve been sacked without any notice”. Quite ironically the guardians themselves have become hapless victims. AAP government, following its ever evasive policy, blamed Central government for withholding the marshals’ services. On the contrary itself couldn’t pay them for Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) services but utilized their services for pollution control drive? And now with elections impending it suddenly wakes up to reinstate 10,000 marshals to save the women! The politicization of such crucial issues and political opportunism can be expected from the AAP government only!
The 2012 Nirbhaya case had exposed the unsafe travel prospects for women in DTC buses. A decade later Delhi High Court raised query for status report regarding safety procedures as alert buttons and camera installation for women commuters in DTC buses in December 2023. The Hon’ble Court suggested several measures to ensure safer travel as the measures have not been very effectively implemented. On ground the reality is that as stated in the ‘Riding the Justice Route’ report by Greenpeace India in October 2024, almost 75% of women feel unsafe after dark to travel in DTC buses, over issues of harassment, poor lighting and erratic bus schedules.
Not only women commuters even the female employees face brunt of insecure work environments. Working conditions for DTC women employees are beyond satisfactory. In November 2024 DTC’s women employees held protest at the all women Sakhi bus depot, Sarojini Nagar demanding parity of pay, job regularization and improved work conditions. So quite apparently women face insecure conditions even at their jobs due to AAP’s anti-women, gender discriminatory policies despite a woman CM being at helm of the affairs.
Statistical data also exposes the vulnerability women have faced in Delhi under the almost decade of AAP governance. Of the cases registered in National Commission for Women (NCW) during 2023, 8.4% cases totaling 2411 complaints were for Delhi, retaining its’ consistent 2nd position in the list of top ten states with the highest number of complaints. The statistics in Crime in India 2022, the annual report by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that a total of 13 States and Union Territories recorded crime rates higher than the national average of 66.4. Delhi topped this list at a rate of 144.4. In 2022 Delhi had topped in terms of number of reported crimes against women among 19 metropolitan cities in India. The NCRB reported 14,158 incidents, including 1,204 rape cases, 3,909 kidnappings or abductions, and 129 dowry deaths. In 2021 Delhi registered the highest number of rape cases among metropolitan cities in India, with 1,226 cases. At the very inception of AAP’s regime in 2015 the number of assaults with intent to outrage modesty was 82,422, while the number of insults to the modesty of women was 8,685.
NCW data also furnish supporting inferences. During 2022-23 NCW received 2822 complaints ; in 2021-2022, it registered 3361 cases ; 2020-2021 the number was 2971 ; complaints received for 2019-2020 were 1957 ; in 2018-2019 the figure was 1733 ; while for 2017-2018 the registered cases were 1664 ; during 2016-2017 the complaints from Delhi were 1830 ; in 2015-2016 registered complaints from Delhi numbered 2867 ; the figure tally for 2014-2015 was 3619 ; 2013-2014 it was 2784 ; 2012-2013 complaints were 2377 ; 2011-2012 the registered complaints numbered 2390. The statistics reveal that not much changes have been effected as regards the vulnerability faced by women in Delhi during the bygone decade although several initiatives were taken by the NCW in association with Delhi Police. Women safety happens to be one of the most prominent activities of the NCW. The Crime Against Women Cells (CAW) are attached to various Police Stations in Delhi. NCW held periodic interactive sessions with Delhi police officials on varied aspects related to women’s security, introduced Mahila Jan Sunwais (2016), launched legal services clinic to redress women’s grievances, conducted capacity building programmes for women police officers, and so on…The “Power Walk” Campaign on 1 March 2020 was intended to reclaim woman’s safety and her right to access the streets and public spaces at night without being judged and harassed. It witnessed participation of over 1000 women walking from India Gate to Janpath.
Women constitute 69 lakh, i.e. almost 48% of the electorate of Delhi. They have a substantial say in determining the nuclei of power for administering Delhi. Through a cautious exercise of their ballot power they can ensure better life conditions for them, for the next 5 years. Indian women are known to make informed choices. The access to decision making, higher education, and media exposure has indeed created a shift in the voting space. The shallowness of the false propaganda of AAP leaders and the grass root level work by selfless leaders will surely go a long way to expose the ‘myth’ of women’s security created by the AAP government which in fact is the greatest travesty of women’s security as also denial of the women’s right to live with dignity. The way incumbent CM sits on a chair next to the former CM’s chair, bespeaks the subservient mentality nurtured within AAP ranks and folds towards the unquestionable authority of Kejriwal. So as to reiterate that neither the physical safety nor psychological wellbeing or the honour or decorum of womenfolk has remained intact under the AAP regime. We may celebrate days, constitute committees and cells, organize events, initiate training programmes, however unless the mentality changes the ground reality remains the same. For this an affirmative spirit is required that operates beyond concerns of vote politics and fake empathy for the womenfolk, which is lacked in the AAP corridors.
Written by
Dr. Preeti Sharma
Prof. & Head,
Department of History & Culture,
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
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