A Day With One of Delhi’s Only Female Auto Rickshaw Drivers

By ⋅ January 23, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

As I was driving through Delhi last spring, I spotted a rare sight: A woman in a bright white tailored suit driving an auto rickshaw, one of Delhi’s ubiquitous three-wheeler vehicles. I immediately jumped out of my car, ran over to her, and got her phone number. Just a few days later, I spent the day filming Sunita Chaudhary, one of the city’s only female auto rickshaw drivers.

Delhi rickshaw driver Sunita Chaudhary. (Photo: Sonia Narang)

Delhi rickshaw driver Sunita Chaudhary. (Photo: Sonia Narang)

55,000 auto rickshaws cruise the city’s crowded streets, and it’s traditionally a man’s job to drive these vehicles. But, Sunita Chaudhary has never been the type to follow traditions.

“I’ve never cared about what society thinks,” she said. “You can’t feed yourself if you follow society.”

Chaudhary’s conservative family didn’t approve of women working outside the home. So, she left her hometown more than a decade ago, and came to Delhi.

“I did not have money or the education to support myself,” she said. “All I had was the strength and determination to do something in life.”

After working odd jobs, she struggled for three years to get an auto rickshaw license, due to the difficult nature of getting a commercial vehicle license.

For years, Chaudhary rented an auto rickshaw for $8 a day, leaving little money leftover for daily spending. “I would sleep in the auto, and get ready and change clothes at the public toilets at the railway station,” she said.

Eventually, she received a government loan to buy her own auto rickshaw, and she paid it back overtime. Several years later, she still hasn’t told her family about her job.

“I eat well, and I can pay off my rent with the money that I earn. I make ends meet,” she said.

Her daily earnings: $10 on average.

Chaudhary says it’s a risky job and she’s also been harassed by the police. But, she’s determined to keep driving. She avoids belligerent passengers and if someone threatens her, she says she acts tough and rude.

“Work is work, and if something bad has to happen, it can happen if you’re sitting at home,” she said.

Over the years, she’s gained supporters and friends in high places, including attorneys who helped her get a license and secure a loan for her auto rickshaw.

Chaudhary also talks openly about her political aspirations. In fact, as I filmed her driving past the Indian Cultural Center in Delhi, a male employee came out of the building to meet us. When Chaudhary started discussing plans to run for office, he said those positions weren’t meant for auto drivers like her, and she should just stay in her place.

She paid no heed to naysayers, and just a few months later, rode up on a horse while wielding a sword to file her nomination papers for India’s vice presidential post. She didn’t win, but she’s not the type to give up.

Discussion

10 comments for “A Day With One of Delhi’s Only Female Auto Rickshaw Drivers”

  • http://twitter.com/cmendoza Carmen Mendoza

    Bless her soul… 

  • http://twitter.com/hbtoasted hot buttered toasted

    Three cheers. Delhi needs more women like her.

  • Susan Hollingsworth

    I hope to meet her one day.  I can’t think of a better way to get around the city as a young, international female traveler.  In fact, is there any way to get in touch with her to arrange her services during my time in New Delhi?

  • Susan Hollingsworth

    I hope to meet her one day.  I can’t think of a better way to get around the city as a young, international female traveler.  In fact, is there any way to get in touch with her to arrange her services during my time in New Delhi?

  • Shupon Nazmar

    How can you not love this woman. And riding up on a horse wielding a sword? Epic! You go girl

  • GOM Dubai

    I may be being pedantic – BUT either she is the only female driver, or one of the few female drivers but she can hardly be the one of the city’s only female drivers.

    Good for her, hope she does well

  • http://www.facebook.com/roger.fontaine1 Roger Fontaine

    as an evolved male I welcome her courage and determination to defend her God -given rights of equality. She reminds me of our own Canadian Mary Walsh’s character Marg Delahante and Warrior Woman with her red outfit and sword out to slash inequality and injustice. Good on you Sunita. Namaste.

  • runcotvs

    There are – and have been – woman taxi and rickshaw drivers in southern India and Mumbai.  But Delhi? No. And it is indeed an achievement for a woman to do in Delhi. It is a capital and looks all urbane (compared to the south or the rest of the country) but it’s a very thin veneer. Delhi is an uncouth, rotten, and dangerous place. I find a lot of shallowness and snobbery among the better-off Dilliwallahs too. I might be biased because of my own experience. When I first went to Delhi for grad school as a young man from the south, the treatment I generally got was nothing short of racism – in the workplace, social get-togethers, and in my hunt for accommodation. But maybe it was just me….

    Getting back to the subject, I really hope someone guides this woman a bit.  Maybe a women’s non-profit? She ought to dump that horse and sword, really. Get more women to join up as rickshaw drivers. Start as street vendors with those ubiquitous food carts. Hang around tourist places and bus/train stations as voluntary guides or tourist/auxiliary police. All these get you some visibility. Organize these corps, Lead them to the polls and start with the nasty city administration and move on up, taking a lot of others with you, ingraining an understanding of the process and the fire to fight in all your comrades. That’s what she ought to do. And NOT belittle all her own hard work and gumption in meaningless symbolism. The Horse and The Sword is not for you, leave it for those vulgar Delhi weddings.

  • Neema Nene

    Awesome, Obama just signed a bill for equal pay for men and women here in the USA.  Women fare better but still there are ceilings that need to be broken all over the world and they are breaking.  Educate the children both male and female on the fairness for all!

  • http://www.facebook.com/abby.blazavich.1 Abby Blazavich

    to whom it may concern, regarding booster-seats for vaginas who choose to be driving a car:

    as the webmaster of http://www.thelessergender.com, i must make my complaints known. i am afraid for my life when i see a car in front of me which seemingly has nobody driving it. i fear that the driver has been taken to heaven in a rapture, and i fear that there is nobody driving the car. i fear for my life, not only because the rapture ignored me…but because there is nobody driving the car in front of me. i fear that the car going to swerve, it’s going to crash, and i don’t want to be the one to die when a rapture has taken place and i’m still on earth.

    now, if i pass a car which i thought nobody was driving, i do see that the driver is a member of the little gender, the shorter gender, the smaller gender. it is for this reason that i believe in mandating booster-seats for all of the wombn and the vaginas of the world. if they’re driving a car, the vaginas must be seen by the people in back of them – if they’re too pipsqueak-esque for their heads to hover over the seat then the vaginas NEED a booster seat…or a man in the car, since men are tall enough to be seen through the back window. for crying out loud, how do vaginas see over the steering-wheel when i have seen some vaginas not much taller than their 8 year-old children? i relate vaginas who drive automobiles to the end of “ferris bueller’s day off,” when tom bueller is stuck behind an old lady whose head barely reaches the steering-wheel and who is swerving all around while driving way too slowly.

    also, it is not just for the safety of the smaller, lackluster gender that booster-seats should be mandated. as i have stated, anyone driving behind a car with seemingly nobody inside of it is apt to freak-out and possibly cause a wreck. now, if the vagina is driving her man around then i’m not worried about anything (except for the vagina’s delusions of gender-equality/identity), mainly because if i see a man’s head hovering above the passenger’s seat then i’m safe to assume that there is someone driving the car. the delusions i am worried about, well, they are all about the kind of people that children will become after being experienced to little vaginas who drive their husbands around in the family car as if to appear as more “in control” than the bigger/taller/stronger gender. to further my point of masculine superority and to relate it to something as human as sex, i will say that it’s not up to the wombn to end sex. sex does not and cannot happen unless a man’s penis is hard, it’s not up to the wombn and a wombn is not to be “in control”. a wombn is to BE controlled. men rape vaginas because men are in control. as for the vagina, well, unless a man is erect then no justifiable rape can take place. rape is a man-thing, this is why it stands for “Risk Affirming Patriarchal Endeavors”.

    it is no wonder that rape is so common in the armed forces – if i were a soldier then i would want to teach the female soldier (who became a soldier because of gender-based physical requirements) a little something about gender. it is inconceivable that we allow vaginas to be in the armed forces to “protect and serve” anything but lunch. for crying out loud, what kind of hint do they need in order to realize that they are lackluster? there are already hints such as gender-based physical competitions. ie, there are gender-based sports teams because one gender would serve as a handicap to another gender, there are gender-based military requirements because vaginas can’t achieve the same physical abilities as men can achieve, there are gender-based eating competitions (coney island, anyone?) for the same reason. now, i get off on seeing people who are regarded as “strong” lifting less than me at the gym, but this is only because i grew up being a “skinny little queer,” as taylor robinson called me in the 7th or 8th grade. the truth is that society should not be giving vaginas a false sense of reality by telling them that they’re strong and that they can do anything a man can do. the aforementioned gender-based physical competitions should justify the “anything a man can do” line as a lie.

    let me get back to my point: booster-seats should be mandated by the department of transportation because the driver of any car or truck needs to be seen from behind. i mean, vaginas wear high-heeled shoes and shoulderpads – why do the wannabees stop there? why don’t they willingly get booster-seats as (yet another) prop of “gender-equality” – especially the vaginas who drive big trucks? when i was 20 and driving a big GMC jimmy, i was told that big trucks make up for small balls – so if vaginas are a total absence of balls then why don’t vaginas even think of putting booster-seats in their cars as a way of facilitating a fabricated sense of masculine gender-identity?

    MANDATE BOOSTER-SEATS FOR VAGINAS WHO DRIVE, AND DO IT NOW!!!!

    mr. dylan terreri, i
    dr. sheldon cooper, ii
    http://www.thelessergender.com
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    “When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it.” – Madonna
    http://www.jaggedlittledyl.com/essays
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