My paper focuses on the capitalization of women’s insecurity in local trains in West Bengal, India; and how hegemonic paradigms of gender binaries are manifested in the contingent (un)democratic public transport space, relegating women commuters as mere trespassers and victims of their own precarious lived realities.
Violence, be it physical, social, or cultural is a pervasive factor of the human experience, and by introducing the women-only train, Matribhumi local in 2009, the West Bengal government has perhaps capitalized on the social construction of the accumulated fear of violence of/among women commuters in their every-day lives. Even though it seems to have turned out to be a short-term fix for a graver reality, the Matribhumi local has remained popular among majority of the women commuters. But do these women commuters realize the extent of their own complicity with structural and symbolic violence and how it is being commodified? Reflecting on the situation of women in Bengal while analyzing violence in rush hour trains, the paper is attentive towards understanding whether the train spaces are mere units of the already existing systemic Patriarchal regimes, or is a separate space having its own nodes of discrimination.
How must then one resist this capitalization of the experiences of the women commuters? Considering the complex nature of the space, the paper also highlights how the space in the Matribhumi locals intersect along lines of caste, class, sexuality; with the division of gender that is visible in the hyper-masculine space of rush hour trains in Bengal. Is it possible to address the unstable identity of the category of women, knowing that the mainstream society capitalizes and cashes on rigid segregations between men and women without realizing the fluidity which these identities hold?
In approach, the paper incorporates empirical and theoretical measures. Being interdisciplinary in nature, it is attentive to the anthropological accession and to the gender sensitive nuances, by remaining grounded in available and tested methods of both disciplines.

I’m an independent pre-doctoral researcher from Kolkata India. I’m formerly associated with the Department of Global Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark.
I have completed my Masters degree in English Literature, and have been employed as a Guest Lecturer in English at the Department of English (UG &PG studies) at Rishi Bankim Chandra college since May 2014.
I have always been proactive about working on women’s rights, and currently my interest in women’s mobility rights have stemmed from my personal experience as a daily commuter in Bengal.

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