BehanVox: The BluSmart Bubble And the Women Inside It
This week in BehanVox: how nomadic communities are experiencing heat, Ashoka teacher Ali Khan Mahmudabad gets bail, and more
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Hello and welcome to BehanVox! We have a lot of great stories for you this week but first we must celebrate writer, lawyer and activist Banu Mushtaq’s Booker Prize for Heart Lamp, her Kannada short story compendium about the inner lives of Muslim women. These are quiet, everyday stories that are just not heard often enough now in an increasingly shrill world. “This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small; that in the tapestry of human experience, every thread holds the weight of the whole,” Banu said in her acceptance speech. “In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds, if only for a few pages.”
The fact that Indian news publications had to put out explainers headlined ‘Who is Banu Mushtaq?’ is a comment on many things – the exclusive club that our literary circuits have become, the celebrity centred myopia of its gabfests, the shrinking space for regional literature and less known voices. For now, we have only one word to say for this Booker triumph, the second for an Indian woman writer after Geetanjali Shree, “Hurrah!”
Onto a glimpse of our stories – we bring you an exhaustive analysis of why BluSmart’s collapse hit its small fleet of women drivers the most. And how the heat crisis is most devastating for the nomadic communities of India.
story So Far
Dream Disrupted: For women like Ambika who sought a driver’s job in the burgeoning ride hailing sector, BluSmart had appeared to be a much better choice than Ola and Uber. For one there was more money, the shifts were flexible and rides were ordered and fixed in advance giving the job a certain predictability. More importantly, you did not need to invest in a personal vehicle, an expensive proposition beyond many women, and the company was willing to invest in teaching you driving skills. BluSmart seemed to understand the material and cultural barriers women face in the mobility business, and offered logistical, technical and financial support to offset them.
It was a dream ride for women like her from families with few means – a window to financial autonomy, security and mobility. But it all came crashing down about a month ago, when the Securities and Exchange Board of India found Blusmart’s cofounders guilty of using Gensol Engineering, another company they promoted, as a “personal piggy bank”.
The dismissal had been abrupt. Drivers were asked to immediately return their vehicles to their station hubs and have since remained unemployed and unpaid. Any request for information about their futures, they say, is met with either silence or abuse. There are anyway few driving jobs available to women.
“Inhone humein acche acche sapne dikhaye, lekin last minute mein aakar berozgaar kar diya (they let us dream and then left us unemployed),” says Ragini, a former Blusmart driver. She was among the 50 drivers who staged a protest in Jantar Mantar earlier this month demanding clarity and compensation from the company, and sought government support.
Deepa, who is the sole caretaker of her parents, says no cab company is willing to hire women drivers due to a perceived lack of skill and experience in this field. Unlike men, they do not have the means to own a car or take up an independent driving business. “Humein koi rakh nahi raha aur hum ghar par baithe hain (no one wants us so we are sitting jobless at home),” she says.
The Blusmart story is not an isolated one, it is emblematic of how privatised capital is allowed to run amok with little to no oversight in India, say experts. Then there is the precarity built within algorithm-driven platform work, about which we have reported extensively (here, here and here).
Read our story here.
Heat Precarity: Heat levels across India are soaring as is humidity and city and state authorities are busy drawing up heat action plans to help the vulnerable. But there is one community, constantly exposed to the precarity of the elements but rarely ever considered in these plans. These are the nomadic and denotified tribes who are pushed even further into the margins by historic prejudices that continue to this day.
Priyanka Tupe travels across Maharashtra to report on how these tribes are surviving the heat, water shortage and flimsy shelters. In Manewadi, a village in Solapur’s Madha taluka, she visited a Dombari settlement and found that, banned from common water sources, impoverished families had to take on bonded labour in neighbouring villages to procure water.
“We have to gather up the cow dung and clean their yards, cut fire wood and do other chores for them. Only then can we get more water from their wells. If we ask to use the taps or wells or water bodies in Manewadi, they say ‘we have spent lakhs of rupees on building the wells, why should you get the water for free?’” said Sangeeta Shinde.
Water is so scarce the Dombaris count every drop, drink less of it, and bathe infrequently. “And then the upper caste people in the village say we are filthy so we cannot touch common water resources,” said Ramesh Shinde of the basti.
Community members carried water in large plastic pots tied to cycle carriers in the scorching heat of 3 pm. Children are not spared the task either.
The homes of NT-DNT communities are made with flimsy and sometimes heat trapping material. They cannot afford fans and often spend the day under the shade of a tree. Food becomes scarce because of perishability. Even in a metropolis like Mumbai, women from Vimukta tribes face greater risks to their health and safety as they stay outdoors in soaring temperatures.
Read our story here.
Talking Point
Bail For Now: The Supreme Court granted bail to Ali Khan Mahmudabad, associate professor at Ashoka University, arrested for his critique of the government’s use of feminist optics to address the recent armed conflict between India and Pakistan. But the investigation against him is to continue, the court said.
Ticked Off: Nine women journalists at Newslaundry filed a defamation suit in the Delhi High Court against Abhijit Iyer Mitra for posting sexually abusive social media content targeting them. The court on Wednesday refused to hear Mitra till he took down his post and gave him five hours to do so.
Restore Forests, Says SC: The Supreme Court has directed state and union territory administrations to set up Special Investigation Teams to examine if forest lands have been allotted to private parties for non-forest activities. It directed them to take back possession of such forest lands and hand them over to the forest departments. The directions related to the allotment of reserve forest land in Kondhwa Budruk in Pune district for agricultural purposes in 1998 and its sale to a builder the very next year. You can read our story here on how Adivasis are being displaced from their forest habitats to make way for property developers.
BehanVox Recommends
Questioning Reform: Mahesh Raut – an activist arrested in connection to the Bhima-Koregaon case – explores the consequences of legal reforms, focusing on the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO) Act, inside the Taloja prison. As an undertrial prisoner, he reflects how POCSO often serves as a tool for preserving regressive structures by punishing youthful love that defies the status-quo.
Stitching Peace and Protest: Ankita Dhar Karmakar writes about Rafooghar, an embroidery center located in south-east Delhi, for women and boys from Mulsim and other marginalised communities. With the aim of community-building and arts-based therapy, this centre has become a space for creative expression, rest, resistance, and leisure
Rewriting history: Anjali Jhangiani chronicles how Priyanka Kamble and Komal Gaikwad, Pune waste pickers who were taunted by their in-laws for being ‘uneducated’, cleared the SSC exam.
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