Women-driven ‘Pink Rickshaws’ to take over streets of Maharashtra soon!

In a bid to make women safe and provide employment for females, the Maharashtra government has planned to roll out ‘Pink Rikshaws’ across 10 cities including Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur. The interesting initiative will also see e-autos to keep a check on pollution.

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These e-rickshaws will be driven by women. The government will provide a 20 percent subsidy to unemployed women to buy a rickshaw; applicants will have to bear 10 percent of the cost, while the balance 70 percent will be taken care of by bank loans.


The scheme, aptly known as ‘Pink Rickshaws’, will offer a means of livelihood to women in financial need. The scheme will also offer safety to women travelling in these cities. Dr. Prashant Narnaware, commissioner, women and child development department also mentioned that 5000 pink rickshaws have been proposed in the first year.
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Narnaware also mentioned that according to the proposed plan, women applicants will only have to give 10 percent of the rickshaw cost. He further said that the department had proposed e-rikshaws in the pink rickshaw scheme to make it environment-friendly. These rickshaws also need less maintenance. Earlier, these e-rickshaws were launched in Goa, Lucknow and Surat.


However, the idea of starting these women-driven rickshaws is not something new. Earlier, the state government had introduced the ‘Aboli Rickshaw’ scheme for women. Under this scheme, there was not any provision for subsidy. Applicants were just needed to pay 15 percent of the vehicle cost under the scheme as 85 percent was taken care by bank loans. But the scheme was not successful and one can hardly see ‘aboli rickshaws’ in Maharashtra.