It was just another Monday morning as people on Palakkad’s English Church Road readied themselves to face the week ahead. Shaking off any vestiges of Monday morning blues, they went about getting a hold on things when, out of the blue, there was a collective gasp from pedestrians and others on the roads. Passers-by gawked at the driver of a massive 14-wheeler truck with 30 tonnes of cargo. The driver was a petite woman who was to deliver a consignment from Bhopal. Yogita Raghuvanshi is the first woman truck driver in the country.
She is not the typical inter-State truck driver. While most drivers are not in the profession by choice, she is. A qualified lawyer who preferred to travel the road not taken, Yogita decided to take to the highways to support her family. She has been driving through different terrains since 2000.
The road aheadRaghuvanshi grew up in Nandurbar, in Maharashtra, with four siblings. After her schooling, she studied Commerce and Law. Soon after, she was married to a man in Bhopal who, she was told, was a lawyer. But, he was, in reality, a truck driver.
“I was told he was a lawyer practising in Bhopal High Court. His family hid the truth from us,” says Raghuvanshi.
Despite having a B.Com and LLB degree, her in-laws did not permit her to practise law. However, things changed when her husband died in a road accident and the onus of fending for the family fell to Raghuvanshi. Surprisingly, she opted to become a truck driver as opposed to practising law.
“If I had opted to be a junior to some lawyer and enter the legal profession, I would have got only a pittance in the initial years. I knew that driving trucks meant instant wages,” she says.
She has driven over 5,00,000 kilometrers in her truck so far, and admits that roads in south India are the best to drive on while those in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are the worst.
She maintains that she is not doing this in a quest to break stereotypes, but because of her circumstance.
“So please don’t make out as if I am from another world,” she adds. She says that she has had her fair share of problems when she started out — shuttling across the country with her truck, enduring hostile stares, snide comments, and more — however, she has braved it all and has carved a niche for herself.
