Surekha Shankar Yadav, 51, Mumbai

 
First woman loco pilot in India

“You wouldn’t give me a second glance on the street because there’s nothing unusual about the way I look. Yet I am the first Indian woman to drive a train.” This statement is as simple as the expectations Surekha Yadav had when she applied for a job in the Indian Railways. She had no inkling she was about to make history.

It was 1986 when the 21 year-old took the plunge. “I saw an advertisement for the post in the Central Railway’s Mumbai Division and sent in my application. I had no clue whether the job was for a man or a woman,” recalls Yadav, daughter of a farmer from Satara in Maharashtra. She believed her only chance at landing a job with the Railways was her diploma in electrical engineering from the Government Polytechnic at Karad in Satara.

It was only when Yadav was selected as an assistant driver by the Central Railway in 1989 that it hit her—the young woman was going to pilot Mumbai’s suburban local trains, the lifeline of the country’s financial capital. “Many people expressed disbelief when I got the job. No one ever thought I could become a train driver. Although the thought that women don’t drive trains did bother me, I just kept doing what I was doing,” says Yadav, wife of a police officer and mother of two college-going boys.

Yadav’s zeal for her job has always been exemplary. After suburban local trains, she went on to become a goods train driver in 1996, a ghat driver in 2010 and an express mail driver in 2011. She hit her next big milestone in March 2011, when she became India’s first woman to drive the Deccan Queen from Pune to CST in Mumbai. Her achievement was even sweeter as her first run with this prestigious train took place on March 8, International Women’s Day, recalls Yadav, now a senior instructor at the Driver’s Training Centre in Kalyan, where she had trained.

With every successive feat, the spotlight was trained on her over the years but it’s not always been a smooth run. “While pursuing a tough job like this, sometimes managing home takes a back seat. But I have a great family that is proud of my work and supports me in everything I do.”

• My success story: “I’m one of the two women train drivers in Central Railway and am proud of my job. For me, it was important to have a job after my studies, especially because I was the eldest in the family. I might have taken up anything at that point, so it was sheer luck that I got this opportunity.”
• Challenges: “In the beginning, people close to me thought I would give up after the initial phase of training. But I am not the kind of person who gives up. I kept moving forward and never quit. I think every woman should do that—never, ever quit.”
• The inspiration behind it: “For me, the fear of going back home as a failure and telling my parents I couldn’t do it was all the inspiration I had to hold on to my job.”
• Aspirations, goals and vison: “My goal is to keep working till my retirement and never give anyone a chance to say that women cannot do things in a male bastion.”
• The way forward: “It is nice to see so many women working in the Railways now, although there are still very few who want to take up the job of a train driver. Women today are taking up unconventional jobs; I hope they are enthusiastic about becoming loco pilots too.”
• Awards & achievements: GM Award for first lady loco pilot on Indian Railways (2011); Woman Achievers’ Award Central Railway (2011); Prerna Puraskar (2005)

—Aakanksha Bajpai

Photo courtesy: Surekha Yadav
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
March 2017

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