Woman Bus Conductor Attempts Suicide in Bengaluru

On February 28, 2019, Jyothi a woman bus conductor of the Bengaluru Municipal Transport Corporation (BMTC) attempted to take her life by consuming poison in Somanahalli depot, 31. She was attended to by her colleagues in the vicinity.

Nagaraja of the BMTC Workers’ Union told NewsClick that Jyothi has recovered now. The conductor had been under tremendous pressure from the Depot Manager to pay the revenue and was also abused by the manager; she had applied for a leave which the manager had denied to sanction. “Jyothi had come to work for the first shift even on Thursday but the manager did not assign her duty and asked her to report for the general shift. Jyothi told him that she had a three-year-old child and requested him not to change her shift timings. However, the manager did not pay heed. After waiting for a few hours, Jyothi consumed poison in the depot around 1.30 PM. The depot staff rushed her to a nearby hospital. Other drivers and conductors boycotted work and staged a protest demanding suspension of the manager,” a conductor told The New Indian Express.

According to Nagaraj, this is the situation in all the bus depots across the city. He observed that there has been a 50 per cent reduction in the BMTC staff for 6 years now and thus, the ratio of number of conductors to per bus in the city has also reduced. “It was 9:1 five years ago and now it is 4.5:1. This has increased the workload on each conductor and also the demand of the depot managers on the conductors to pay them the revenue has also increased,” said Nagaraj.

The Union is currently protesting in Magadi Road, against the reduction of the staff by BMTC and the difficulty in availing leaves. The protesters are demanding that the Divisional Controller, Chief Security Officer and Chief Revenue Officers to pay heed to their demands.

According to a report by Indiaspend, Bengaluru is India’s third most-populous city, but its bus system is not only India’s largest with 6,448 buses (in 2015-16), it also lost the least money (Rs 1.01 billion) over six years upto 2016, among eight metropolitan bus systems. According to a report in the Business Standard, with 8.4 million people living over 709 sq km, Bengaluru still depends overwhelmingly on its buses, although some pressure has been relieved by a seven-year-old 41-station, two line 42.3-km metro-rail system. In 2015-16, the metro carried 16.8 million people–about 46,000 people a day–whereas the BMTC carried 144 million–about 365,000 a day–almost eight times more. However, the largest bus system in the country is currently not recruiting enough staff.

Also Read: #MeToo: Working Class Women Share Their Stories

In addition to the issue of understaffing in the union, the women conductors of the BMTC continue to face problems in a profession that still remains male dominated. Out of 36,000 bus conductors, only 6,000 are women. As many reports on the women bus conductors across the country show, these are women from the lower economic strata who struggle to make there family’s ends meets as well as young girls who want to pursue education. In a patriarchal society as ours, women’s role is restricted to the household and the working women are not an exception to this traditional rule. In Jyothi’s case, the two different roles that she was playing created conflict with each other.

According to various reports in the local media, Jyothi has been with the BMTC for last 14 years and for last six years, she had been doing the 6am-1pm shift. But yesterday she learnt from the depot manager, Prashanth that she would have to be on a 12-hour shift from 8am-8pm as she was not bringing enough revenue.

The fact that women have “other” responsibilities of their household, families etc. is always used as an excuse to deny them employment. Once employed, it is used to harass them as was done in the case of Jyothi. The women conductors face harassment in the hands of both the employers and bus passengers.

On November 3, 2018, in the light of the #Metoo movement, the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA), along with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Guttige Pourakarmikara Sangha, Garment and Textile Workers’ Union, Domestic Workers’ Rights Union and the KSRTC/BMTC/ NEKRTC/NWKRTC Workers’ Federation hosted a public programme called “#MeToo: Working Class Women Share” in Bangalore.

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Lekha Adavi in her report of this programme titled, ‘#MeToo: Working Class Women Share Their Stories,’ wrote, “Parveen, a mechanic with the BMTC, said that sexual harassment is not just rampant among bus commuters, but it is even more so for women bus conductors.” A female conductor noted, “We have to deal with drunk men sometimes. We have thousands of rupees in our bags from ticket collection. If we create a ruckus about the harassment we face and lose the money in the scuffle, then we will have to pay BMTC from our pockets. This is why most women conductors do not even talk about sexual harassment,” she said and added that lack of toilets for women bus conductors at bus depots and bus stands also enable sexual harassment.

The women conductors in the city just like their counterparts in other cities across the country, are harassed by the male passengers. Reporting one such incident in Maharashtra, Aarefa Johari writes, “Harassment on the job is so routine for women bus conductors, most of them tend to just shrug it off and get on with the job. But for the past few days, women conductors working in the Maharashtra State Transport buses have been visibly tense and scared, both on and off duty. On June 4, one of their colleagues was brutally beaten by a male passenger on a bus in Dombivli, a suburb near Mumbai, after she reprimanded him for boarding from the front door instead of the front door and hurling abuses at the driver.”

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