It is a classic image of Kolkata: scrawny, spindly-legged men, often in advanced middle-age and barefoot, pulling passengers through the streets in rickshaws. According to a vote taken last month by the city legislative council, however, the hand-pulled rickshaw may soon be a relic of the past. The city has banned the practice as “inhumane.”
Kolkata is the last major city in the world where hand-pulled rickshaws carry passengers. China, where the rickshaw was invented, outlawed the “bourgouis and exploitative” practice in 1949, during the early days of the Cultural Revolution. Now, politicians in West Bengal are hoping to follow suit. Says the Chief Minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, “We have taken a policy decision to take the hand-drawn rickshaw off the roads of Calcutta on humanitarian grounds. Nowhere else in the world does this practice exist and we think it should also cease to exist in Calcutta. It is inhumane.”
Are hand-pulled rickshaws inhumane?
Not if you ask the people who pull them. “Running a rickshaw is no more inhumane than working in the mines or in the fields,” says Somen Mitra, leader of the Kolkata Rickshaw Pullers Union. The comprison with other hard, honest physical labor is a fair one. In fact, one must ask: in a city in which a depth and diversity of inhumanity is on display as though it were a carefully curated museum of civil cruelty, why the fuss about rickshaws? No one seems to complain when low-caste bungees are put to work clearing blocked sewage pipes by hand. Police officers can be seen buying chai and snacks from small children at shops along the footpaths, rather than arresting the proprietors for violation of the state’s unenforced child labor laws. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 children who live on the streets of Kolkata. The tens of thousands of women who are burned to death or grossly disfigured each year by their husbands are disregarded, and the crimes go unpunished, as community officials speak about the need to do something about “cooking accidents.”
So why single-out hand-pulled rickshaws?
As so often turns out, it has nothing to do with ethics, despite the rhetoric of the politicians. The traffic of Kolkata is a mess, snarled in a perpetual knot. Vehicular travel across the city is becoming all but impossible as more-and-more cars and trucks choke the roads, and me-first anarchy banishes any notion of orderly passage. And though they are pulled at the margins of the roadways and usually at a running trot, the slow-moving rickshaws are being scapegoated.
ActionAid India estimates that there are more than 18,000 rickshaws plying the streets of Kolkata, nearly 6,000 of whom are registered with the city government. During Kolkata’s monsoon rains, when the streets are regularly flooded, rickshaws are a used widely, even for trips as short as across the street. The rickshaw-wallahs are also busy during the sweltering months of spring and summer, when walking the streets can seem a hellish ordeal. During these times, the Rickshaw Puller’s Union claims that its members earn approximately Rs. 100 ($2.25) per day, though this figure is almost surely exaggerated. (The union is preparing to commence negotiations for compensation for the pullers, in the event the ban is actually enforced.) During the cool days of late autum and winter, most rickshaw-wallahs sit idle, clanking their dull-timbred bells against the wooden rails of the rickshaws in vain hope of attracting a passenger. These men are poor to the point of near destitution, living on the pavement and unable to support families.
The pullers who are able to earn, at least a little, during any time of year, are those who deliver tens of thousands of children to school. Rosalie Giffoniello, whose Kolkata-based NGO Empower the Children runs educational programs throughout the city, says she cannot imagine how kids will get to school if the rickshaws are actually removed from the streets.
It’s far too early to tell whether the ban will go into effect, or when. Kolkata passed a similar law outlawing rickshaws in 1996, only to see it overturned after city-wide protests, led by the trade unions. The city subsequently offered a payment of Rs. 7,000 ($155) for every rickshaw that was voluntarily turned in. None were.
Kolkata is the last major city in the world where hand-pulled rickshaws carry passengers.
Actually, Kyoto still has hand-pulled rickshaws that carry passengers. In April 2004, as I made my way up the city’s famous Philosophy Walk, I found a small corps of rickshaw pullers ready to pull any eager tourist to one of the many temples on the trail. Unlike the Calcutta drivers, the Kyoto rickshaw puller was athletic, and though they charge around 40 yen for most trips, they apparently make a good deal of money.
Sir,
I am keen in taking up the cause of the handpulled rickshaws of Kolkata. In dat matter i hav progressed a lot. But its always better to ask mare people for help.
If u hav any vedios related to handpulled rickshaws, please send in my mentioned email id.
Regards,
Anindya Banerjee
Nice article.
CLPOA also looks after the street children at kolkata.
If interested, please visit :
http://clpoa.org
Any hint, where these hand-drawn rickshaws are still being sold? Newly-made or second-hand? Without taking stock away from those who make a living off them?
Maybe there are still manufacturers. I am talking of export to Germany, where they might be welcome as a means of taking your own family for a ride, i. e. for fun and exercise. And I would be willing to import them. So if anybody could put me into contact, it might be of mutual good for both parties.
As a major citizen of KOLKATA and a veteran tour-escort in tourism as well a book writer on Indian Tourism, I would suggest to keep the Hand Pulled Ricksaw alive ( I say alive in Kolkata as it is the only city which can boast of its prideness but not in such manner as it is today. Ofcourse this Ricksaw can be well decorated and modified for a touristic attraction in Kolkata ( which lacks lot in tourism point of view) and then the ricksaw can be used only in specific areas in the city as well as touristic spots of the city for a short distance trajet. And of course the price for a ride should be more than what it is today to promote tourism as well as giving bread earning opportunity to those who are habituated to pull a ricksaw easily. I think those who have already adapted how to pull it, does not harm or give any trouble rather than staying jobless. There are so many hazardous job taken by the people to earn their living, which is not banned but why this beautiful Hand Pulled Ricksaw. Keep the prestige of KOLKATA alive. Rathindra Narayan Ghosh(New Delhi)
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