In the great epic Ramayana of the Indian subcontinent, the story of ‘abduction of Sita’ began when she accidentally crossed the Lakshman rekha, which had been drawn to keep her safe inside the dwelling in the forest. The boundary line that limited the movement of Sita is entrenched in the sociocultural ethos of India so deeply that there have been several feminist interpretations of the mythological boundary line. The portrayal of constrained mobility in the epic through an imaginary boundary line drawn by patriarchal norms still remains pertinent to be discussed in twenty-first-century India in the context of the modern manifestations of constrained gender mobilities.

Mobility or the ‘freedom to move’ has been a theme of intellectual discourse of human geographers, sociologists, and demographers who have examined the concept from different theoretical perspectives. The questions pertained to how mobility determined the employment structures, fertility patterns, career opportunities, and social mobilities of women depending on their subject disciplines. The ability to move freely around social spaces, without any visible or invisible constraints on the basis of caste, gender, and social classes, is a positive freedom which is the foundation of inclusive societies. Mobility is ‘positively coded as progress, freedom or modernity itself and it simultaneously brings the issues of restricted movement, vigilance and control’ (Uteng and Cresswell, 2008: 1).

Mobility plays a key role in the social equilibrium. ‘Mobility’ defined as ‘the ability and freedom to move’ is a necessary aspect of human life. The constraints on movement by individuals, society, or the state curb the ‘positive freedoms’. The instrumental freedoms improve the capabilities of persons and enable them to live more freely. These freedoms are in turn the function of the social arrangements.

I present in this book the mobility aspect, especially of women, which has not received much attention in the development studies discourse so far. The analysis of mobility of women in a given sociocultural context can illuminate the various dimensions of mobility and the underlying gender norms that determine specific behaviour patterns among women in work, social, and public spaces.