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The Rediff Business Special/Shobha Warrier

Grease on fingernails, petrol on cheeks, business on mind

Photographs by Sanjay Ghosh

Machines, grease, petrol, fumes, water sprayers, screwdrivers, spanners, spark plugs, tubes, tyres, headlamps, batteries, air-pumps, motor vehicles. Where do you find these? No prizes here, the answer is, an auto workshop. Now visualise these images: grease on painted fingernails, oil marks on rosy cheeks, scratches on shapely hands, exhaust dust particles on kohl-coated eyelines. And: neat-looking navy blue salwar-kameez uniforms, white dupattas, blazing yellow fragrant marigold flowers in tidily plaited hair, bangled hands, one hammering the steel chain of a moped into shape, the other adjusting the position of an ornamental chain of pearly white beads dangling from around the neck.

These images mark India's first all-women auto service venture in Madras.

The business was started by seven enterprising women. They were led by social worker Renuka who took the initiative to give training to these girls. They took the collective "courageous step" to work as mechanics in the motor vehicle workshop. "So what if grease defiles our painted fingernails, we are proud of what we are doing, " say the women mechanics.

It was not a joyride from the beginning. Recalls 18-year-old Sangeeta: "The first few months of training were terrible. The male mechanics teased us, tried to dissuade us. 'This work is not for supple wrists. This is for muscular arms,' they said. Some even asked us to go home, get married and bring up children -- 'that is what women are supposed to do'. After we started this workshop, some of the autorickshaw drivers used to tease us when we passed by them. Such humiliations only steeled us more."

There is something about Madras. The metro has a 'conservative city' tag, but this is where women foray into pathbreaking venture. The first all-women biotech park, the first all-women petrol filling station, the first woman-managed motor vehicle driving school for women...they are all in Madras.

It took three years for Renuka, who concentrates on women development activities, to set up the all-women workshop.

After completing her masters in philosophy in micro-level rural planning and development from the Gandhigram University, what Renuka wanted to do was join a college and work as a teacher.

She did join a college and taught for a year as social work was not on her agenda. It was her activist-husband Balakrishnan who encouraged her to take up social work. He works to eradicate child labour on a fellowship from Child Relief and You. Now she works in 26 slums where gender discrimination is alarmingly high.

While waiting for her moped to be delivered after repairs at a TVS service station, Renuka wondered why only men dominate the business of vehicle workshops. Hard as she tried, she could not visualise the image of a woman mechanic.

She made up her mind to bring balance to the scene. Renuka sent a proposal to the TVS to start a workshop where there would be only women mechanics. TVS liked the idea. The company volunteered to train the women. She placed newspaper advertisements calling for women to join a free training course in vehicle mechanics. The adverts evoked no response.

Renuka then talked to the women in slums where she was working for a non-government organisation. There was a response, on expected lines: "We women for the workshop jobs where hands will get dirty? Those are jobs for men, no?"

Undeterred, Renuka advertised again in newspapers, got wall-posters pasted and notices distributed. Two women sent in their applications, one from Neyveli, another from Vellore. The grand idea lay struck to the tarmac -- take-off seemed improbable.

At this time, Mamacash, an organisation from the Netherlands, volunteered to fund the project. The third round of adverts offered free training and a stipend. This attracted forty women to the interview. Thirteen of them were selected; however, only ten came to attend the course.

Some of the girls found working among 300-odd men very difficult. And within one week of the training, three girls dropped out of the course. The remaining seven successfully completed the one-year training in September 1999, thanks to "encouragement from various elderly women".

Jayanthi remembers: "Mother persuaded me to continue when I was toying with the idea to quit one month into the course." She has vivid memories. "The initial days were very difficult. I didn't like grease on my hands and fingernails. Work was also very strenuous. And it was not a very pleasant experience to work with hundreds of men -- we were only seven girls. But I must say they were very good to us. Initially, those men used to ask, 'Why don't you sit at home like other girls?' But my mother encouraged me to complete the course. Now I'm happy because everybody is praising us for doing something different."

The thrill of doing "something different" attracted Selvi, 20 and a diploma holder in civil engineering, to the course. "It was only because of the encouragement of Madras Christian Counseling Centre that I joined. In the beginning, I felt very disillusioned. I didn't know whether I took the right decision by changing my line. The attitude of the men at the workshop was not very encouraging at times. Their argument was that when they themselves found the job difficult, how can we, women, do it? It was very disheartening -- I used to cry at night. If not for the counseling centre, I'd have gone back to Neyveli, my native town. But I must admit that the same men became extremely helpful once they found that we were quite serious about our work. But then, we had to work really hard to gain acceptance."

Bremi, a diploma holder in electronics engineering from Kanyakumari, came to Madras in search of work. She was a school teacher before she decided to become a mechanic. The early hurdles rattled her. "The only motivation was that I was doing something different. More women must enter this field."

By the time they completed the training, the women mechanics had also learnt two-wheeler driving. But Renuka could not raise enough money to start a workshop. She did not want the girls to work elsewhere. Things began to fall in place once they rented some space in a shopping complex. TVS once again extended help by offering spare parts on credit from Ramkay Agencies, one of its dealers. Ramkay also offered old furniture at a concession. The owner of the commercial space, a lady, donated a table. The mechanics-in-waiting painted the workshop white and did up the space.

No less a luminary than Jayanathi Natarajan, the Rajya Sabha member of the Tamil Manila Congress, agreed to inaugurate the workshop. That ensured plenty of media coverage for the novel venture.

How did the businesswomen do business? Renuka offered free service to customers in the first three days. The response was overwhelming. "The free service offer brought in people but most of them were women. I must admit they were slightly apprehensive about the ability of our girls. But the rewarding time came when some of the customers came back to express their happiness and satisfaction."

Renuka remembers one particular scene. "On the first day, a social activist brought his TVS Suzuki motorbike for repair. The girls decided to service the vehicle not inside the workshop but outside, in full public glare. The successful operation seemed to have given them a lot of confidence."

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