This woman calls the shots in Mumbai metro tunnels
She is like any ordinary 26-year-old who loves to travel and listen to music, when she wants to relax. But there is something different about her. She is the only woman engineer with knowledge in tunneling employed with the Mumbai Metro since 2015. Nimisha Singh, a native of UP, is working in a traditional man's zone, calling the shots while working near Mumbai Central.
"I always wanted to be a civil engineer"
With a lawyer-politician father and a government counsel mother to support her, Singh graduated in engineering in 2013, after which she worked with a private company in Delhi. "I always wanted to be a civil engineer as my family members are associated with the field. As a kid, I used to visit construction sites," she said, elaborating about her choice of profession.
Even her former expat colleagues were apprehensive about her
Working in a male-dominated field wasn't easy, but it wasn't impossible either. "Male employees were not keen to take instructions from me. Gradually, I could build a rapport," said Nimisha, regretting the fact that women choose to go for planning and designing and not on-field engineering. Even the expats working in her first company associated to the DMRC were apprehensive about her, she recalled.
For tunneling work, Mumbai is more difficult than Delhi
Talking about her former colleagues, Singh said, "For a few weeks, they didn't even allow me to work. But the Indians in the firm convinced them." She added tunneling in Mumbai is harder than Delhi. "In Mumbai, utilities aren't mapped and we've to work through the road by barricading the stretch," she signs off. Singh's aim is to work in mechanized and conventional tunnelling.
