[sustran] Re: Meanwhile: The rickshaw's last stand

[Sujit Patwardhan]

11 August 2006



This is a wonderful article, presenting different viewpoints, arguments and
rationale for banning or continuing with Calcutta's (now Kolkata's) hand
drawn rickshws. Now to answer Eric's questions:-

1. Yes it certainly does.
2. Yes it is.
3. I am not sure, but to the motorised vehicle users, the hand drawn
rickshaw is certainly an obstruction and they (auto vehicle owners) are
people with political and economic clout even in Maxist ruled Kolkata. In
India by and large, vision for transportation continues to be the old
outdated one where more roads, wider roads, flyovers and other
infrastructure primarily benefiting the auto vehicle is seen as the ideal,
and only a small though thankfully growing minority is presently
articulating the alternative sustainable model based on the principle "City
for people rather than for auto vehicles" so well expressed by Enrique
Penalosa. So I would say that the shortsighted view would be that the hand
drawn rickshaws put an economic strain on the community by obstructing fast
moving motorised traffic on Kolkata's roads. However it is increasingly
difficult to support this view as uncontrolled growth of personal auto
vehicles in all large and growing cities in India are beginning to choke the
roads, poison the air from deadly health-threatening auto emissions and
contributing to the growing figure of fatal accidents caused by faster
moving vehicles moving on roads carrying a wide assortment of vehicles (hand
drawn rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, bicycles, handcarts, animal drawn vehicle
and pedestrians). Transport Planners are only now admitting the need to
consider the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians and as a result the
recently announced "National Urban Transport Policy" despite the watering
down from from the Draft Policy lays stress on the needs of these modes. The
importance of public transport which needs far fewer vehicles to carry many
times more people is also being pushed by transport experts, urban planners,
NGOs and civil liberty groups all over the coutnry but this is a slow
process.
4. Yes it does.
5. This is a difficult question because it is not limited to the physical
design of hand drawn rickshws alone. People, especially the educated elite
are not at all comfortable with this mode, even when they are sympathetic to
the livelihood issue of the rickshaw puller. This is because a human being
pulling other human beings or goods in a hand drawn contraption is not a
pleasant sight. Perhaps if the roads were better designed, safer and with
less steep portions this perception may change. Also the design of the hand
drawn rickshw, potential to move up to a cycle rickshaw are issues that are
not part of the current discussion. For the present we are trying to
highlight that hand-drawn rickshaws need not be inhuman provided they are
accepted as a component in the road planning, traffic planning and urban
livelihood issue. This of course gets even more complicated because many
rickshaw pullers in Kolkata are immigrants from Bangla Desh and that is a
polictically sensitive issue, particularly for the right wing parties like
the BJP.
6. Certainly will.
7. If the mode is suppressed the economically lowest segment will lose out.

It always strikes me that those who take up arms against these modes seem
have no deep feeling for what is happening on the street and in these
communities, and take to it an abstract deus ex machina attitude I am not
sure that this is the stuff of good policy and democracy.

I agree. Their plight is similar to the slumdwellers who are seen as
parasites living off the city (general perception is they don't pay taxes,
use the city's infrastructure for free and need to be eradicated) but it is
increasingly clear that the opposite is true. The slumdwellers actually
subsidise the city by offering cheap labour and providing services that no
other group provides.

Hope you find some of these points useful.

--
Sujit







On 8/10/06, Eric Britton <eric.britton at ecoplan.org> wrote:
>
>   [If I may sneak a word in here, it strikes me that after all these years
> that here are the key issues that need to be sorted out for this or any
> other Global South Mobility issue:
>
>
>
>    1. Does this mode provide useful mobility services?
>    2. Is it affordable and available to poorer people?
>    3. Is it putting an important economic strain on the community?
>    4. Does it provide paid work for people who want to do it?
>    5. If there is stuff that is wrong with it (long list here), and
>    what point by point can be done to shorten and soften this list?
>    6. Will an appropriately cleaned up version of it contribute to
>    sustainable development and social justice – and a softer, safer and better
>    city.
>    7. If the mode is suppressed who wins and who loses?  And what is
>    their economic bracket?
>
>
>
> It always strikes me that those who take up arms against these modes seem
> have no deep feeling for what is happening on the street and in these
> communities, and take to it an abstract deus ex machina attitude I am not
> sure that this is the stuff of good policy and democracy. Now on the
> Datta-Ray's version of the story.]
>
>
>
>
>
> *Meanwhile: The rickshaw's last stand *
>
> *Sunanda K. Datta-Ray International Herald Tribune *
>
>
>
> WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2006 http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/08/09/opinion/edray.php
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *CALCUTTA*<http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=CALCUTTA&sort=swishrank>
> Calcutta 's hand-drawn rickshaws - the last in the world - were granted a
> reprieve while elsewhere India 's government clamped down on blogs and
> Internet cafes to prevent cyber attacks. That's India 's diversity for
> you.
>
> The rickshaw has been dying a long time. The last license was issued in
> 1945. A bill to abolish the humble vehicle - its name derived from the
> Japanese jinrikisha (jin, human; riki, force; sha, vehicle - "human-powered
> vehicle") - was introduced last year in the West Bengal legislature but
> has been sent to a select committee for further discussion.
>
> This dithering highlights a major difference between China and India . Mao
> abolished rickshaws in one sweep, but Indian politicians, trade union
> leaders and nongovernmental organizations have been arguing all these years
> that a ban would deprive thousands of poor laborers of their only means of
> livelihood. Rickshaws are cheap, safe and clean, unlike Calcutta buses
> belching black clouds of diesel fumes.
>
> The opposing argument is that rickshaws violate the dignity of man. The
> puller sweats it out in unbearably hot temperatures or wades through flooded
> streets for a pittance. It's back- breaking work, and tuberculosis is an
> occupational hazard for pullers who often live on the pavement, scrimping
> and saving to send a few cents home.
>
> Other forces are also at work. Calcutta had only 6,000 licensed rickshaws
> in the 1990s when more than 30,000 plied the streets. If you looked at the
> license plates of many vehicles, you saw only squiggles instead of numbers.
> If you were trundling along in one - which I wouldn't for love or money -
> and your journey lay past a police station, the rickshaw puller flatly
> refused to take you.
>
> Illegal rickshaws weren't quite rogue operators. They were owned by
> influential citizens, including policemen, who rented them to the pullers
> for a few rupees per shift. If caught, it was the poor puller who was fined.
> One often saw rows of rickshaws - the ones that didn't get away - lined up
> outside police stations.
>
> Hand-pulled at first, then cycle driven, rickshaws have been used at one
> time or another in Tokyo , Kyoto, Hong Kong, Dhaka and most Southeast
> Asian cities. They first became popular in Japan in the late 19th century,
> the early Meiji period, replacing horse- drawn palanquins. Men were faster
> and cheaper than horses.
>
> India 's rickshaws appeared first in Simla, where British viceroys escaped
> the summer heat. The elite had their own vehicles with liveried pullers, and
> observed strict protocol. The young Maharani of Kapurthala was reprimanded
> for bowling away in her rickshaw from the theater before a British burra
> memsahib could summon hers.
>
> Calcutta 's flourishing Chinese traders originally used rickshaws to
> transport goods; in 1914 they applied for permission to carry passengers as
> well. Soon, pulling a rickshaw became a peasant's first job on migrating to
> the city. Many stayed with it for life. In Roland Joffe's 1992 film "City of
> Joy ," based on Dominique Lapierre's eponymous novel, the Indian actor Om
> Puri, playing a hard-pressed rickshaw puller who hasn't abandoned hope,
> encounters an American doctor, played by Patrick Swayze, fleeing the West
> with no hope at all.
>
> West Bengal 's governing Marxists are moving cautiously. First, several
> major Calcutta streets were closed to rickshaw traffic. Then, more than
> 12,000 rickshaws were seized and destroyed. The policy of not renewing
> licenses has brought down the number to 1,800. The West Bengal chief
> minister, Buddhdeb Bhattacharjee, promises a total ban next year.
>
> There are many theories about the rickshaw's origins. Three Americans - a
> Massachusetts blacksmith, a Baptist minister and a missionary in Yokohama whose
> invalid wife needed to get about - have been credited with the invention. So
> has an Englishman known as "Public-spirited Smith." The Japanese say it was
> the work of three Japanese whom the Tokyo authorities permitted to build
> and sell rickshaws, providing one of them put his stamp on every license to
> operate a rickshaw.
>
> Indians are not in the picture. But Calcutta is the rickshaw's last stand;
> and a monsoon outbreak may have contributed to the last minute reprieve.
> Only rickshaws can brave the city's flooded streets in which cars and buses
> are regularly stalled.
>
> *Sunanda K. Datta-Ray is former Editor of The Statesman newspaper in
> Indian.*
>
>
>
>
>
> ================================================================
> SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred,
> equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries
> (the 'Global South'). Because of the history of the list, the main focus is
> on urban transport policy in Asia.
>
>
>


-- 
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Sujit Patwardhan
sujit at vsnl.com
sujitjp at gmail.com

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