Hyderabad: Rakesh Kumar Singh left his plush job as a corporate communications personnel and his family, back in Delhi to understand why gender oppression exists in India by cycling across the country.

He started his journey in Chennai last year in March, and is in Hyderabad now after covering more than 5,000 km. He has already visited various cities, towns and villages in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and AP.

His multi-coloured cycle, called Gender Bender, with a board reading, Ride for Gender Freedom, is a crowd puller. Mr Singh says it makes his job easier as people themselves approach him out of curiosity.

He said, “The educated elite in our country are themselves involved in gender oppression. I met civil servants, IIM and IIT graduates who said that they took lakhs worth dowry.

Even in a state like Kerala, with a high literacy rate, evil of dowry is deep rooted among all religions. Men do not want to share responsibilities with their wife. In Madhapur I saw a woman work in a paan shop with her husband. Here too the man was sitting idle and wife was making paan.