Woman Accused Of Practicing Class Discrimination On Delhi Metro Comes Out With Her Side Of The Story

Recently, the internet was quick to judge the picture of a woman, her son and his nanny in the Delhi Metro. The picture showed the mother and son sitting on the seat and the nanny sitting on the floor. The internet raged and discussed grave issues of class discrimination.

Seen in Delhi metro: Mother and child take seats while the child’s nanny sits on the floor on a fairly empty train. Caste/class discrimination really is space-agnostic. pic.twitter.com/cawsIU2zWs

— Sanya Dhingra (@DhingraSanya) January 20, 2018

The photo was posted by a journalist Ms Sanya Dhingra of The Print. Many media channels and news websites picked it up and passed moral science lessons on class discrimination, but nobody bothered to ask the people present in the photo their side of the story.

Her story

The woman, who was in the photo, wrote in a blog her side of the story. She clearly stated that the situation was very different from what is apparently visible from the photo. She boarded the train with her nanny and her son and the three of them were comfortably seated on the floor initially. But the child became fussy.

“My baby dislikes being seated when he has the opportunity to interact with so many people, so my nanny sat there with the bags and I started taking a walk with my baby in the coach,” she writes in her blog. She further wrote that she was offered seat by many people but she refused to do so as the child would not want to sit. It is only later she thought that the child might calm down after seeing outside the window.

“I made him stand there to see the lights and traffic outside to distract him briefly but to no avail. Eventually, I decided to feed him. As he has recently learned to eat by himself, he happily opted for the option and sat next to one girl,” she stated. After the girl deboarded, there was space for her to sit as well and she occupied it as they were going to deboard just four stations later.

Irresponsible journalism?

Ms Sanya Dhingra was a witness to most of the situation. She even asked the nanny why she was on the floor, to which she replied that she was comfortable there. Still, she decided to click the picture of the woman without her permission and uploaded it on social media without her permission.

The woman, who is an AIIMS doctor says, “We, at AIIMS, continuously serve the poor and others who find themselves in a severely challenging time in their lives. We interact with these people day in and day out; then, how can I, being in public service, misbehave with a lady who stays with me, who takes care of my baby just because she is poor. We share equal household responsibilities. We stay in a rented flat near AIIMS so that we can be easily accessible in needs of emergency and here we do not have any separate servant quarter- there goes the “space discrimination”. So she stays with us, eats with us, laughs with us, travels with us and even sleeps where we sleep. It pains me that all it takes to be maligned in this day and age is one out of context picture and an irresponsible journalist.”

The Logical Indian take

While we understand that class and caste discrimination are ingrained in our society and it should be our constant endeavour to end it, but this incident shows that the basics of journalism should never be forgotten just for a story.

Journalists have a responsibility toward the society – to present facts to people. While creating an article or forming an opinion, both sides of a story are important. Also, clicking somebody’s picture without their permission and uploading it on social media, is an infringement of privacy.