Public spaces and infrastructure are usually designed for an abstract ‘generic’ user. In the context of an ideology that deems women’s proper place to be at home, this imagined ‘neutral user’ of public facilities and infrastructure is invariably male. Not just gender, but all manner of politics—class, caste, religious and sexual, as also physical ability—are part of imagining this ‘neutral’ user. The prototype user then is not just male but also middle or upper class, Hindu, upper caste, able-bodied and heterosexual.
