Meet India’s First Youngest Female Pilots Of Namo Bharat Trains

Shivani Singh’s family experienced abrupt uncertainty when she was 12, following the death of her father. The family of six faced a daunting undertaking, from school and college fees to household costs. Shivani needed to grow up swiftly and she did. After finishing school, the girl turned to her childhood interest in sewing to pay for her two-year diploma education in electrical engineering at the Bhagwati Institute of Technology and Science in Dasna. During campus hiring, a government corporation came asking for personnel to ‘lead’ a new project.

Shivani, after several months of training, hit a major milestone in her journey, she became a pilot of Namo Bharat, India’s first semi-high-speed rail system, which was introduced by the Prime Minister last year and would be fully operational in 2025, when trains will operate from Delhi to Meerut. Shivani, the youngest of five siblings, lost her father in a car accident.

Singh said, “I started sewing out of boredom. Eventually, it allowed me to contribute to my family’s income. My older brothers helped me in school, but there came a time when I had to decide to stand on my own feet. I enrolled in a two-year diploma course in electrical engineering and finished it with the money I had saved.”

The NCR Transport Corporation recruited 18 women to pilot the new-age trains, and they were trained for a year. They were deployed to Lucknow Metro for the first three months, where they learned how modern trains worked. The remaining nine months were spent at the Duhai depot, where they received both practical and theoretical training on how to operate rapid rail trains. They started with simulators and then moved on to real trains.