On the road to nowhere: the case of Delhi’s cycle-rickshaw pullers
3rd November 2009
Simon Harding
in Delhi is nothing if not diverse. Ten tonne Tata trucks, small white Maruti Suzukis, auto-taxis, scooters and motorbikes, wait for the red light to turn green. As the lights change, engines are revved and horns mercilessly honked as drivers and riders jostle for pole position. Left at the back of the grid, pushing all the weight of his skeletal frame down on each pedal, is the man with one of the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the Indian capital: the cycle rickshaw puller.
There are around 600,000 cycle rickshaw pullers in Delhi, who earn a living by carrying up to three passengers around on the bench seat fixed over the two back wheels of their rusty heavy framed bikes. They are in demand. The middle classes of Delhi hate to walk. My pleasant morning stroll from my flat to the office is greeted with cries of ’you walked for THIRTY minutes?’ or ’ that must be nearly 3kms!’. I should take a cycle rickshaw or maybe an auto. Either way, I shouldn’t walk.
The cycle rickshaw sits at the foot of the transport hierarchy. Longer journeys of 10km or more are taken in taxis and shorter hops in auto-rickshaws which weave their way down even the tightest backstreets. The shortest trips, most of which are walkable, are reserved for the cycle rickshaws. Sadly, the cycle rickshaw pullers are also at the foot of the socio-economic hierarchy: they are amongst the poorest of the city’s migrant labourers, who have fled from poverty, poor harvests and natural disasters in their home states over the course of several decades (mostly Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh). Some return home during harvest time to work the fields, others earn their living in the capital and hardly ever see the families they have left behind. Either way, they arrive in Delhi not merely looking for work, but seeking to secure their own survival and the survival of their families.
For the casual traveller, the weary figure lying on the back seat of his rickshaw taking a hard earned break before another long stint in the saddle may appear as the perfect small businessman: he had nothing, somehow he buys a rickshaw - the cheapest mode of transport going, now he’s putting in the hard work, taking passengers, earning and saving. Eventually he’ll have enough money to get a better job, move out of the slums, maybe buy an auto rickshaw, put his kids through private school and perhaps get a ‘proper’ job with a regular wage. It’s just him and his bicycle versus the world: the ultimate example of the free market at it‘s best. Right? Wrong.
Look a little closer and a completely different picture emerges. One of corruption, exploitation and entrenched poverty.
Virtually none of the rickshaw pullers actually own their vehicles. Instead, powerful local businessmen own multiple rickshaws and rent them out to the poor pullers at around Rs.25 per day. A recent study by a Delhi-based NGO found that in the Jamia Nagar area, one individual was renting out 200 rickshaws and two others nearly one hundred each . Each rickshaw costs about Rs.3,500 to buy new (as cheap as Rs.1,500 second hand), or Rs.25 per day for 4.5 months: not a totally unobtainable sum. So, why do so few pullers buy their own rickshaws?
According to the 1960 Cycle Rickshaw By-Laws, licences are limited to one-per-person: a puller may have one licence and one rickshaw only. So, in theory the rickshaw puller should be that perfect small businessmen working to fill his own pockets. However, in reality transport officials sell licences to anyone wealthy enough to pay a decent bribe. How many licences an individual is allowed depends on the size of the bribe. Corruption within the state institutions set up to regulate the trade allows a small number of businessmen to buy as many licences and run as many rickshaws as they like. The cost of the bribe is then recouped in the daily rental cost demanded of the puller. Consequently, the migrant rickshaw puller cannot afford to buy licences on top of the cost of the rickshaw and must be content with paying a hefty daily rental charge which eats into his daily wage and destroys what little chance he had of upward social mobility.
Business and entrepreneurship in India is seldom as straight forward as it first appears. Behind the most mundane small businesses, as well as the booming ICT industry and the major projects in the construction sector, lies a complex network of contacts, arrangements, relationships, deals, payments and bribes which exist in the space between the state and private business. Although different in each industry, city and even neighbourhood, this system has one universal characteristic: it channels money away from those at the bottom, the rickshaw pullers, bus drivers and construction workers, and channels it upwards to the local business elite and the corrupt officials who are supposed to act in the interest of the workforce. Any intervention by a charity or NGO aimed at improving the lot of the pullers would fall flat for this reason.
The dust-clad figure straining to move two people through the rush hour traffic is not somehow imbued with an burning entrepreneurial zeal, rather a pressing need to survive: a need for maintenance, for food, shelter and a little money to send home, rather than a desire for upward mobility. He is powerless to improve his situation, caught between bad times back home and exploitation and corruption in the city. Without massive changes in transport policy and a thorough clean-up of government operations, the road ahead for Delhi’s rickshaw pullers is going nowhere.