Evan Vitale Consulting: Meet Khushi Prajapati: Driver with Sakha Consulting Wings, a women's-only cab …

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Meet Khushi Prajapati: Driver with Sakha Consulting Wings, a women's-only cab … – Economic Times

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Khushi Prajapati is just over five feet tall and would appear almost nondescript if you saw her at a bus stop or a Metro station. But once behind the wheel of her Hyundai Accent cab, she dons a different avatar and oozes confidence. One of the 19 women taxi drivers on the rolls of Sakha Consulting Wings, a women’s-only cab and chauffeur service, Prajapati went through 14 rigorous modules of training for over six months, which included personal grooming, self-defence classes and communication skills besides intensive driving lessons.

“I have been a driver with Sakha for over five years now, having started as a private car driver and later getting my commercial driving licence; I have been driving this cab for four years now,” says Prajapati, as we cover a distance of 15 km from the ET Magazine office in central Delhi to CR Park in the south of the capital.

A typical work day for the 23-year-old could be one in which she has to pack in up to 12 hours of duty on and off the road, clocking up to 200 km. “Our agency has a new client which is a travel agency handling inbound tours; very often I have airport pick-ups late at night or early in the morning. Many of the Western women travellers are pleasantly surprised to find a young woman picking them up at 2:30 am and start a conversation on the way. While they ask me about the challenges that a woman driver faces on Delhi’s notoriously unsafe roads, for me it’s an opportunity to speak with them in English and brush up my language skills,” says Prajapati.

Her demeanour behind the wheel is cool and composed — until a two-wheeler rider at a traffic signal stops alongside and passes a lewd comment. “I can knock you off your bike with my car,” she angrily retorts. Once the two-wheeler beats a petrified retreat, Prajapati is quick to explain that her mentors have warned against losing her cool while driving with passengers in the car. “I always try to be polite, but sometimes I can’t help getting a bit annoyed when drivers are rude or aggressive,” she explains.

So what are the biggest challenges on the road for a woman taxi-driver? Surprisingly, Prajapati is not overly worried about the lack of safety and security on the roads of Delhi, especially late at night. “That’s one of the issues, but I do have some basic self-defence training and carry a pepper spray. Besides, our taxis are all being tracked through GPS by our office,” she says.

But long hours on the road and waiting for passengers at offices, hotels or markets is a lonely job for the young woman since, unlike her male counterparts, she doesn’t find other women to hang out or chat with. “Sometimes, I talk to male drivers at parking areas, but only if they seem to be decent and respectable. There are times when I need to use the washroom between long drives; some of my women customers help by taking me to their offices,” she says.

One of four siblings in a family that moved from Jhansi in Madhya Pradesh to Delhi in search of better economic opportunities, Prajapati has become an inspiration for young women in the families of neighbours in Badarpur on Delhi’s southern border with Haryana, with some of them sending their daughters to Sakha for training. “My father, a construction worker, and my mother are very supportive of my decision to take up this challenging job. My two sisters are studying, while my brother works with an NGO to teach English to young students in our neighbourhood,” she says. But she is definitely the breadwinner in the household earning between Rs 9,000 and Rs 15,000 a month with her basic salary and overtime.

Women’s rights activist Meenu Vadera, who set up Azad Foundation (the NGO arm of Sakha) in 2008, had women like Prajapati in mind and wanted to start a venture that would enable women to earn and live a life of dignity and freedom. “While Azad Foundation was set up as a not for profit, Sakha is run on the social venture model with a part of the profits being ploughed back every year. We felt that helping women from economically deprived families to make a livelihood as taxi drivers would be the ideal way to break the glass ceiling as well as provide a safe transport service that is very useful for other women,” says Nayantara Janardhan, director at Sakha and one of the founders.

Today, the organisation has 19 full-time drivers and has helped over 300 women get their driving licences, many of whom have been placed as drivers with private cars. The organisation has also expanded to Gurgaon and Jaipur and has plans to enter Kolkata soon.

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