Freedom in Motion: Women, Scooters, and Assam’s Sakhi Express

‘Why should boys have all the fun?’- the tagline of a scooter advertisement from two decades ago with Priyanka Chopra as the brand ambassador found an unlikely echo in Guwahati’s Khanapara ground on 30 August, 2025. Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma handed over gleaming new scooters to more than 9,000 rural women under the expanded Sakhi Express initiative. The women, community cadres serving as Jeevika Sakhis, Pashu Sakhis, Bank Sakhis, and mobilisers of self-help groups (SHGs) were each given a two-wheeler, a helmet, and a monthly allowance of ₹500 for fuel. The spectacle was impressive: rows of women in helmets, engines revving, and the promise of empowerment riding into the horizon. Dr. Sarma declared: “This initiative is not just about mobility—it’s about dignity, opportunity, and transformation. Women are the backbone of Assam’s development, and our government is committed to empowering them at every level.” It was a compelling image. But does empowerment really come with a set of wheels? Or does it demand something more difficult: a restructuring of how power itself operates in our society?

The Mirage of Empowerment:

“Empowerment” is one of the most overused terms in development discourse. It is invoked to justify policies, sell products, and celebrate initiatives. Yet, stripped of its sheen, empowerment is about power and power is never neutral. It is always embedded in relationships: between men and women, governments and citizens, elites and the marginalised. Power appears in different forms. Sometimes it is power over others: control, decision-making, authority. Sometimes it is the power to create opportunities or make choices. Sometimes it is the power with others to act collectively. And at times, it is the power from within: the confidence and dignity to persist and resist. Real empowerment, then, is not a gift bestowed from above. It is not charity or symbolic tokens. It is a shift in power, where those usually excluded gain a greater share of voice, choice, and control. By this measure, the Sakhi Express deserves careful scrutiny.

The Promise of Mobility:

There is no denying that mobility has transformative potential for women. For cadres who must travel across villages, banks, or veterinary centres, a scooter reduces dependence on erratic buses or male relatives. It saves time, increases efficiency, and can symbolise independence. In societies where women’s mobility is tightly constrained, the sight of women on scooters challenges patriarchal norms. Indeed, evidence from elsewhere underscores this link. In Bihar, the free bicycle scheme for schoolgirls dramatically increased enrolment and retention rates. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, bicycles for community health workers improved access to maternal healthcare. The logic is straightforward: when women can move, they can participate more fully in civic and economic life. From this perspective, Sakhi Express is not without merit. It acknowledges women’s labour, provides a tool to ease their work, and creates a visible assertion of their role in development. But the road to empowerment is not paved by scooters alone.

Delivery without Dialogue:

Viewed through the lens of Communication for Social Change (CFSC), inspired by Paulo Freire’s dialogic pedagogy, the scheme exposes its first contradiction. CFSC reminds us that sustainable change does not come from top-down delivery but from participatory dialogue, collective ownership, and voice. Empowerment is not given; it is claimed through interaction and co-creation. The Sakhi Express was rolled out in a largely top-down fashion. Scooters were purchased, allowances fixed, and rallies planned without extensive consultation with the very women targeted. Post-distribution reports suggest that many cadres would have preferred different forms of support: higher honoraria, subsidised fuel, safer rural roads, or collective transport options. By skipping dialogue, the scheme risks turning empowerment into a mere ceremony instead of a real experience.

The Hidden Costs of “Free”: 

The second contradiction lies in economics. Scooters may be free, but their use is not. Fuel prices make the Rs. 500/- monthly allowance inadequate. Maintenance, repairs, and insurance remain the responsibility of women who are not always financially secure. Here, empowerment collides with vulnerability. A tool meant to ease burdens risks becoming an additional strain. True empowerment must reduce dependence and precarity, not create new ones.

Roads, Risks, and Realities:

A third contradiction lies in context. Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory teaches us that for new technologies to spread, they must be advantageous, compatible with local conditions, easy to use, and visible in action. Scooters have advantages, but their compatibility falters. Assam’s rural roads are uneven, flood-prone, and sometimes unsafe. Not all cadres know how to ride; training remains limited. Safety gear is sparse beyond the one helmet issued. In these conditions, mobility can remain restricted. Moreover, as studies of asset transfers show, women’s control over resources is often tenuous. Male family members mostly husbands, sons and brothers, may appropriate the scooter. Without efforts to normalise women’s ownership and usage, what was meant to empower women may silently re-entrench patriarchy.

Symbolism and Spectacle:

One cannot overlook the politics of spectacle. Governments across India have long relied on distributive schemes with strong visual appeal: free laptops, cycles, mixers, now scooters. These programmes generate striking images, immediate media coverage, and electoral dividends. The Khanapara rally, with its synchronised scooter roll-out, offered just that: empowerment staged as theatre. But empowerment is not a photo-op. Its truest expressions lie in investments less suited for headlines, such as all-weather rural roads, affordable childcare, improved healthcare, and fairer compensation for women’s work. When politics privileges optics over substance, empowerment becomes performance rather than transformation.

Rethinking Power:

This brings us back to the heart of empowerment as a relationship of power. Scooters may enhance a woman’s power to move, but empowerment also requires tackling power over (male dominance), nurturing power with (collective solidarity), and strengthening power from within (confidence and awareness of rights). At present, Sakhi Express largely addresses the individual level, equipping one woman with one vehicle. But empowerment must also be relational and collective. It must give women not just tools, but the ability to influence families, negotiate with institutions, and act together to challenge systemic barriers.

What Could Have Been Different?

Imagine if the scheme had been co-created through participatory dialogue. Women cadres might have suggested:

• Collective scooter banks at cluster level to reduce costs.

• Fuel support indexed to distance travelled.

• Comprehensive training workshops in riding, maintenance, and safety.

• Community campaigns to prevent male appropriation and normalise women’s mobility.

• Investments in roads, repair centres, and parking spaces to support mobility sustainably.

Such measures would have embedded scooters in a wider ecosystem thereby turning a symbolic gesture into a structural enabler.

Lessons from Elsewhere:

International examples reinforce this. In Vietnam, bicycles for rural women were paired with road upgrades. In Uganda, transport support for women farmers was combined with training and community dialogues on gender. In Bihar, the bicycle scheme worked because schools were within reach and local communities were sensitized.

The lesson is consistent: mobility schemes succeed only when embedded in broader systems of infrastructure and social change.

The Road Ahead:

For the Sakhi Express to move beyond optics, three shifts are essential:

1. From Delivery to Dialogue – Involve women as active participants in design and review.

2. From Symbol to System – Embed mobility in a larger ecosystem of roads, fuel, safety, and collective solutions.

3. From Gift to Governance – Recognise women not as beneficiaries but as stakeholders in rural development, deserving institutionalised rights and representation.

Wheels without Power?

As the rally ended at Khanapara, thousands of scooters rolled out in unison the engines roaring, cameras flashing, and the promise of empowerment glinting in chrome. It was a stirring tableau of possibility. But the real test of empowerment lies not in rallies but in everyday journeys:

• the cadre who negotiates with her family to use the scooter,
• the worker who pays for repairs after a flood,
• the community that accepts women’s mobility as normal.

Empowerment is not the gift of a vehicle. It is the building of power to decide, power with others to act, power from within to persist, and power over unjust structures to transform them. Without this deeper shift, the Sakhi Express may stall on the very roads it seeks to traverse. The road to empowerment, like Assam’s monsoon-battered highways, is uneven. But if the State listens, learns, and co-creates, the engines of Sakhi Express may yet hum a different tune: not just of mobility, but of genuine power and change.

ALSO READ: Between Voice and Violence: Free Speech vs Hurtful Speech in Social Media