Rickshaw driver has managed to keep her eye on a higher prize

Besieged by thronging traffic at Delhi's Connaught Place, Sunita Choudhary's left hand releases the clutch, her right revs the throttle and her rickshaw zips past the honking cars. She makes it look easy.

For the past six years or so, Ms Choudhary has been steering a lonely route as the only woman rickshaw driver believed to be working in the North of India. During this time, she has endured beatings from police, harassment from male drivers and no shortage of surprised looks from the customers she stops to pick up.

Now, the 35-year-old wants to use her experience to benefit the people at the bottom of the pile by securing one of the country's highest offices. This week, Ms Choudhary, who as a teenager ran away from home to escape the strictures of village life and an abusive husband she had been forced to marry as a child, filed nomination papers for the vice-presidential election.

"The politicians drive around in cars or else stop off at VIP guesthouses and think they are the upper class. I don't believe that; I believe in talking and communicating with the common person," she says.

India was recently said to be the fourth most dangerous place in the world for women after Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia. Violence, assault and discrimination are rife.

Among those Ms Choudhary has helped are Kusum Lata Sharma and her eight-year-old daughter, Ekta. Abandoned several years ago by her husband, who refuses to help support her, she and her daughter now sleep beneath a tatty piece of tarpaulin.

Ms Choudhary's own story is one of struggle against hardship. As a 12-year-old girl growing up in a village near the city of Meerut, she was married off by her parents to a husband who was violent and alcoholic. Pregnant and desperate, she fled to Delhi where her child died at the age of two months.

She worked in a variety of jobs before hitting upon the idea of becoming a rickshaw driver after coming upon the scene of an accident and helping an injured man to hospital. If she had her own vehicle, she reasoned, she could do more good.

If her campaign for vice-president is to proceed, she will require the backing of at least 40 members of the upper and lower houses of parliament, which make up the electoral college. So far, Ms Choudhary has managed to secure the backing of just one parliamentarian, Jai Narain Prasad Nishad, an 81-year-old member of the Janata Dal party, who represents the city of Muzaffarpur in Bihar, in the lower house of the parliament. "She is hard working," Mr Nishad says of Ms Choudhary. "She has many qualities."

Ms Choudhary says she is not concerned by the fact she has little chance of success and believes that the extra publicity, albeit modest, generated by her campaign will benefit her efforts to help others. "Ordinary people ought to be able to choose their president and vice-president," she says.

"This is not a political contest so different people should be able to challenge. This election is being carried out by MPs so they are likely to choose an eminent citizen. But I think an ordinary person can also be an eminent citizen."