Ticket to freedom: free bus rides for women spark joy for millions in Karnataka | India

In the regimented life of many Indian women, the idea of getting out of the house and hopping on a bus to take a break resides in the realm of fantasy. First they need permission, and then money for the fare.

But the state of Karnataka in the country’s south is changing that. While some of the state’s 35 to 40 million women will still need permission to use public transport, they won’t need to ask for funds to cover the cost of a ticket.

The state government launched free bus travel for women and transgender people on 11 June. Women can now board a bus any time, any number of times to any part of the state. The response has been a tidal wave of smiling women laying siege to buses. In the first nine days of the scheme, more than 40 million women climbed aboard.

One image said it all. As an elderly woman wearing a worn sari in Dharwad, Belagavi district, started mounting the steps, she bowed her head, letting it almost touch the steps, in gratitude. Ningavva Akka told reporters: “Before, I had to take permission and money from my family to travel. Now I don’t have to depend on them.”

The policy aims to encourage more women to work. Women’s participation in the workforce is low in India. The latest World Bank data says women represent 23% of India’s workforce, as compared with 32% in Bangladesh and 34.5% in Sri Lanka.

The hope is that, with free transport, more women can look for jobs and look further away from home while also enjoying the savings. Many women are deterred from working because of the chunk taken out of their modest wages by bus fares.

“I can spend the money I save on getting more milk for my children,” one woman who works as a cleaner in Bengaluru told reporters. “I’ll be able to afford better meals for my family if I get a job,” said another.

Ambika, who goes by only one name, is a 37-year-old widow and works as a part-time maid in Mangalore. With no children, she plans to treat herself. “I’m going to save to buy a gold bangle for myself. On Sundays, I’ll go off somewhere with my sister,” she said.

This is not the first such scheme in India. The government of New Delhi started free bus travel for women in 2019 but it is confined to the city. Tamil Nadu offers a similar policy but travel is limited to short distances.

Karnataka’s policy could be life-changing. In India’s patriarchal culture, one way of controlling women’s movement is denying them money. Without their own income, women of all ages – from girls living with parents to widows living with married sons – have to ask for funds if they want to go anywhere.

“Women live their lives largely within the three- to four-kilometre radius that they can walk or travel to on a 10 rupee (10 pence) bus ticket that they can afford. It’s like an invisible border created by poverty. They live their lives within it. With free travel, they can step out not just for work, but shopping or just to see the city they live in – all the things they haven’t done in the past,” says Shaheen Shasa, volunteer with the Bus Users Forum in Bengaluru.

Srinivas Alavilli, a citizen-activist in Bengaluru, is convinced that free bus travel will trigger social transformation. “When women start flooding public places, it will change the landscape and the greater numbers will help make it safer for women to be out on the streets,” says Alavilli.

Family dynamics will change, he says. Girls who want to pursue higher education will encounter less resistance from parents if the travel is free. Married women who want to work can argue more effectively with their in-laws. “Right now, the in-laws say it costs too much but once the transport cost disappears, it’s that much harder for them to stop their daughter in law going out to work,” says Alavilli.

The buses are currently creaking under the weight of millions of exhilarated women. “There is so much excitement at the idea of visiting family and temples and places they haven’t seen before,” Ambika says. “I am going to wait till the mass euphoria dies down and then my sister and I are heading to a temple we have never seen.”

For the policy to work, the state government needs to bump up the bus numbers. Alavilli said that since 2014, no new bus has been added to the fleet of 6,500 buses in Bengaluru. Given its population of 12 million, the city should have about 14,000 buses.

But no one is complaining of overcrowding yet. They are too busy tasting freedom.

Even the state’s chief minister Siddaramaiah was affected by the excitement. When shown the image of the woman bowing her head as she climbed on to a bus, he said: “This photo will stay in my memory for a long time.”