Anila S from Nellimoodu in Thiruvananthapuram has been in the driver’s seat of Mar Ivanios Bethany Vidayalaya’s school bus for more than 18 months. When she saw an announcement calling for women drivers in Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), she did not think twice before applying for the post.
She is now one of the four women being trained at KSRTC’s Staff Training Centre (STC) at Attakulangara in Thiruvananthapuram. The other three are Jisna Joy C and Sreekutty KM from Thrissur and Sheena Sam from Nilambur. They will be deployed to drive a new fleet of 163 electric buses under the KSRTC. The SWIFT buses were introduced in 2022.
Empower women
V Vinod Kumar, Principal of the STC, says KSRTC’s aim is to empower women. “Society has a tendency to look askance at women in certain professions. Biju Prabhakar, Chairman and Managing Director of KSRTC, is keen on removing those blinkers. When women became conductors in KSRTC buses, there was a buzz. Now, it has become an everyday sight. We are sure it will be the same with these new recruits too,” he says.
At present, KSRTC has only one woman driver, VP Sheela, posted at Muvattupuzha bus depot. She is now part of the team training the four women.
All four of the trainees have a licence to drive heavy vehicles. Anila, Jisna and Sheena are from families who own vehicles; they are motor heads who learned driving to be independent and earn a living.
The driving force
Biju Prabhakar says the decision to appoint women as drivers of KSRTC’s fleet of SWIFT buses was to work towards gender parity. “Once all the SWIFT buses are deployed, we will need about 450 drivers. I would like half of them to be women. There is a misconception that women can only work as conductors. Many women seem to be reluctant to come forward to work as drivers. Despite the fact that there are women driving heavy goods vehicles, there is a belief that driving buses is not a job for a woman. I want to remove that misconception. In European countries, it is common to see women driving buses.”
To improve the facilities for the women drivers, rest rooms and dormitories are being added at bus stations. “It is disappointing that more women are not taking up this opportunity to become bus drivers. Even students can become part-time drivers. Soon, Thiruvananthapuram will be one of the first cities in Kerala where 25% of the drivers will be women. The drivers will be given martial arts training by the Police. Our first recruits are confident women who were driving heavy vehicles. I am sure that within a year, they will be capable of driving the 15-metre inter-State buses that ply between Kerala and Bengaluru.”
Sreekutty lost her father about three years ago and was helping her mother run a chayakkada (an eatery) at Anthikkad in Thrissur when a family friend motivated her to apply for the job.
Thirty-two-year-old Anila says confidently she is looking forward to navigating the city’s roads by August. Her husband, Sherinlal, taught her to learn to drive a two-wheeler after their marriage. Soon, she acquired the license to drive a four-wheeler and followed it up with a heavy vehicle licence.
Twety-two-year-old Jisna has always been crazy about vehicles and driving. Her father owns a tipper and she learnt to drive it.
Sheena, the younger of two daughters, learned to drive on her father’s motorbike and soon moved on to drive an autorickshaw and a goods carrier. “I began driving to help my father on his trips. Since a license is mandatory to take children to school, I learned to drive our autorickshaw and, as soon I turned 21, I took a heavy vehicle licence as well,” says the 28-year-old, mother of a six-year-old. She was teaching at a driving school when she happened to come across the announcement.
Veteran KSRTC driver and trainer Sanal Kumar explains that in addition to driving the 11-feet long buses, the four are taught the basic mechanism of the vehicle, what to check before they begin their duty for the day, road rules and regulations, safety concerns and how to navigate different kinds of roads in Kerala, ranging from crowded city roads to narrow village roads and steep, tight bends in the high ranges.
Comprehensive training
They will also be given classes on managing their health and soft skills to deal with road users and passengers. “They have to deal with road rage, chauvinistic drivers and impatient and, sometimes, rude passengers,” points out Vinod Kumar.
Sheela recalls with a smile how women passengers used to abuse her when she did not stop at undesignated bus stops. “But my colleagues have been supportive and that is what is important,” she avers.
The four trainees chorus that they are happy that Sheela chechi is one of the trainers.
They assert that they are proud to have been chosen as drivers of SWIFT buses. “The lives of passengers are in our hands and so it is a huge responsibility. I have always admired bus drivers who transport so many of us safely from one place to another,” says Jisna.
Echoing her sentiments, Sheena says that it gives her great confidence when Sanal entrusts her to take the bus on the road.
After theory classes in the morning, they break for tea and snacks and then slide into the driver’s seat as Sanal joins them inside the bus. These women are in top gear as they get ready to take up their responsibility of ferrying passengers around the State.
Sreekutty smoothly engages the gears, reverses the bus, turns it around and hits the perennially busy road outside the training college campus at Attakulangara in the heart of the city. Some male pedestrians stand and watch while the women have a smile on their face. Sreekutty has her eyes on the road ahead.
