الفهرس 
Public and Safety in 2020Only 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
In 2019, the Delhi government proposed to make the metro and bus travel free for
women in an attempt to enhance safety in public transportation. While the bus
subsidy was rolled out, the public discourse fervently opposed the metro scheme
and thereby denied access for ‘all’ women to its securitized space. Coincidentally,
major political events during the time of this research – the anti-CAA citizens
movement, communalised violence in NE Delhi, migrant crisis from Covid-19
lockdown– surfaced systemic disenfranchisement of other marginal groups. The
question, which publics are ideal in the imagination of the metro and how do
they experience its unprecedented world-class comfort, hence became central
to this thesis. The research is based on an ethnography in the Delhi Metro,
conversations with metro and bus users, online user surveys, interviews with
metro officials and engagements with city politics. An analysis of the conflicting
socio-spatial relations reveals that safety in the metro is comprised of contestation
in the ubiquitous women’s coach, disciplining of Indian subjects and ‘othering’
of minority and precarious urban residents. I argue that the metro in its very
formation is carved out of expulsions and is set up in a way that boundaries to
accessing it can be multiplied- leading to re-configuration of the public and an
erosion of our democratic engagement with public space. Thus, the innocuous
act of swiping the metro card also reflects who has the power to enter its space;
making the metro free would give access to all kinds of ‘unwanted’ bodies
thereby rupturing the hegemonizing agendas central to the metro’s seemingly
undisputable image. As ongoing projects based on the Delhi Metro will rapidly
transform Indian cities, this work urges that we imagine safe spaces that do not
normalize exclusionary processes and dare to include city’s diverse publics.