The End of the Human Rickshaws

The Last of the Human Rickshaws

First published by Emirates Inflight Magazine. Also published in Farang Magazine

“On a good day I can make 200 or 300 Rupees (5-8$). But during the rainy season, there is so little work that I return to my village and help my wife making chapati.”

Mohammad Kudus is one of about 100.000 rickshaw wallahs who ply the streets of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) on bare feet, pulling wooden two-seater rickshaws loaded with passengers and goods across polluted intersections from dawn till midnight. The 45-year old Muslim earns a pittance to support a large extended family hundreds of miles away in the poverty stricken state of Bihar. He owns nothing but the shirt on his back, the bright blue lungi around his waist and a brass bell, the rickshaw wallah’s traffic horn. His feet are calloused and misshapen. Yet Mohammad’s voice is full of pride when he talks of his profession and the life he leads.

“Sometimes I stay here six months. I stay as long as I can find passengers. I don’t need much. I sleep right over there.” Mohammad points at the pavement across the road. Several other rickshaw wallahs have already made camp, leaning back into their hard benches, smoking bidis. Many of them will end up sleeping on the ground, as other pullers will use the vehicles late into the night. The drivers form a tight-nit community.

But the men who pull their fares through the narrow, potholed lanes of the former colonial capital have little to be happy about. Incomes are barely sufficient for survival and the daily grind of moving heavy loads through a city of more than 14 million people, takes its toll on most rickshaw wallahs’ health within a few years. But men like Mohammad have no alternative income options.

“I have six children at home and three brothers who cannot find work. It’s been like this for a long time, I have been working in Calcutta for almost 30 years.”

Mohammad lights a bidi and hustles for a fare by clicking his bell on the frame of his vehicle. It’s a familiar sound in central Calcutta, distinct and antiquated in the mad cacophony of the city’s traffic.

The human rickshaw is a long-time dying anachronism.

Calcutta is the last city in Asia to utilize this archaic form of public transport. First introduced to India by the Chinese to ferry goods, the British had their Indian subjects drive their masters around in style in the late 19 th century - first in idyllic Himalayan hill-stations, later in many cities of the British Empire. But the British love affair with the human rickshaw was short-lived. In Calcutta, the British stopped issuing permits for new rickshaws as early as 1939 and limited their number to 6000. While many cities in Asia, including Saigon in Vietnam and Phnom Penh in Cambodia, still support large numbers of cycle rickshaws, the human rickshaw, this most ancient, primitive and cruel form of transportation has long been out of favor. Except in Calcutta.

Mohammad Kudus is not optimistic about his profession. “Times are changing fast for us. We used to be organized; we used to have a union. We used to take our fares all over the place, now we are only allowed on a few streets. The future is very uncertain.”

Abdul, another rickshaw puller, adds, “The cycle rickshaw drivers have a union, the taxi drivers have a union. We have nothing and the municipal authorities want us off the streets. They say we slow the traffic down.”

The profession made tragically famous by the characters in Dominique LaPierre’s 1985 best-selling novel, ‘City Of Joy’ and the subsequent Hollywood movie starring Patrick Swayze, is fighting for survival.

Dominique LaPierre, whose book has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, continues to visit Calcutta regularly. The writer is adamant that, then as now, the rickshaw wallahs of Calcutta are an essential part of the city’s life blood, “In the 1980’s I fought the municipal authorities to leave the rickshaw pullers alone. Even today, they buy rice and food for almost a million dependents in Bengal and Bihar. Banning them would mean depriving all these people of their daily meal.”
Today, as more than half a century ago, just 6000 of the approximately 100.000 human rickshaws operate with a proper license. The rest try their luck and bribe the police.

Mohammad explains, “When the police stop us and we don’t have a permit, they take our vehicles. We have to pay 80 Rupees to get them back. Then we drive again until we get stopped again. We would like to get a permit, but the Calcutta authorities are not issuing permits.”

Like all Indian cities, Calcutta is becoming increasingly congested with motorized traffic and while most four wheelers are taxis, private car ownership is steadily rising and the narrow, badly maintained roads are hopelessly inadequate to cope with the number of vehicles that grind through the city.

Mohammad has little time to ponder his circumstances. Most rickshaw wallahs don’t have enough money to buy shoes and none of them own their own rickshaws. Most of them live on the street.

Mohammad laments, “We have to pay 20 Rupees a day to the man who owns the rickshaws. I cannot write, I have no other skills. I am an unemployed farmer, what can I do? And I am not the only one. I think at least half of the rickshaw wallahs in Calcutta have migrated here from Bihar.”

The man who owns the rickshaws is an illusive entity.

“There is nothing to see, no one to talk to,” Mohammad claims and refuses to tell where exactly he rents his vehicle, saying only that the man who owns his rickshaws owns thousands more.

“My boss is a good man. He runs about 30 rickshaws, a small business.”

Abdul finally agrees to take me to the place where he rents his rickshaw. In a small alley off Marquis Street, the rickshaw owner Niam is happy to talk. Surrounded by five or six burly men he emerges from his house with a challenging look on his face. The presence of his ‘friends’ gives the situation the air of a press conference.

“I charge 20 Rupees a day. I run a fair business. If my pullers have an accident I pay for the repairs. If they damage the vehicles themselves, they have to pay.”

The 50-year old Muslim used to be a rickshaw puller himself. “My business is very modest. People like working for me.”

Abdul, standing next to Niam, nods enthusiastically. The ‘boss’ smiles and retreats back into his house.

Mohammad Kudus speaks good English, Bengali and Hindi - all languages he has learnt during his years pulling fares across the city. Yet without some formal education, he has little chance of ever escaping his profession.

Most rickshaw wallahs have large families to support and out in the villages, tens of thousands of people are dependent on this mode of transport for their survival.

That’s why Rama Shish runs a small, thriving business in a side-lane near the Mother House, Mother Theresa’s mission in Calcutta, amongst the destitute and needy. Rama Shish builds and repairs rickshaws.

“My business is good right now.” He points at a couple of freshly painted vehicles. They have gleaming new license plates.

“We take the license plates of any old rickshaw that is no longer usable. That way the 6000 licenses are constantly recycled without having to make new applications.”

New rickshaws are also in demand and Mohammad Kudus confirms that there are many small workshops turning out new vehicles despite the municipal ban. Fake license plates can be had at any sign-maker.

One of the enduring images of Calcutta is the skinny man wearily lifting the wooden poles off the ground and straining to get his rickshaw, loaded with wealthy shoppers and their purchases, moving as quickly and as gently as possible. Ferrying passengers amongst a few blocks of crumbling colonial architecture is an issue of survival, like so many aspects of life in Calcutta.

Dominique LaPierre continues to support the rickshaw pullers, “I gave an interview to a local paper the other day. I pulled out what I call my ‘Calcutta cell phone’, a brass bell of a rickshaw puller and clicked it against my leg. The journalist asked me, ‘What’s that?’ That just encapsulates the dilemma of Calcutta for me. People are not aware of what’s going on in their city. The poor are still largely ignored.”

Rickshaw repair man Rama Shish thinks his business is safe for now. “So many people need work. So many come from the countryside and have no other way to make a living.” He admits, “So we build more rickshaws. It takes me a couple of weeks to turn one out, but there are many other people building them.”

Rama Shish grins, “I sell them cheap, just 8.000 - 12.000 Rupees (200$ - 300$).”

Mohammad Kudus laughs, “After the film ‘The City of Joy’ had been made in Calcutta, quite a few foreign tourists bought rickshaws, boxed them and sent them home. What are these foreigners doing with the rickshaws? Are they being used by people in the West?”

Though change is slow in Calcutta, city coffers are empty, road improvement projects are mired in corruption and the municipal authorities have made little effort in the past decade to come to grips with the chaotic traffic, the last human rickshaws’ days are numbered. The city council wants to ban them from January 2006. It remains to be seen whether this will really mean the end of the human ricksshaws.

Photographs by Aroon Thaewchatturat (www.onasia.com)

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