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 In India by and large, vision for transportation continues to be the old outdated one where more roads, wider roads, flyovers and other infrastructure primarily benefiting the auto vehicle is seen as the ideal, and only a small though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. <div style="margin-left: 40px;"> 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. </div> 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 <div> On 8/10/06, Eric Britton <<a href="mailto:eric.britton@ecoplan.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">eric.britton@ecoplan.org</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div> <div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="EN-US"> <div> [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:   <ol start="1" type="1"> <li style="color: black;">Does this mode provide useful mobility services?</li> <li style="color: black;">Is it affordable and available to poorer people?</li> <li style="color: black;">Is it putting an important economic strain on the community?</li> <li style="color: black;">Does it provide paid work for people who want to do it?</li> <li style="color: black;">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?</li> <li style="color: black;">Will an appropriately cleaned up version of it contribute to sustainable development and social justice – and a softer, safer and better city.</li> <li style="color: black;">If the mode is suppressed who wins and who loses?  And what is their economic bracket?</li> </ol>   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 <a href="http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/08/09/opinion/edray.php" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/08/09/opinion/edray.php </a>     <a href="http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=CALCUTTA&sort=swishrank" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> CALCUTTA</a> 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.   </div> </div> </div> ================================================================ 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. </blockquote></div> -- ------------------------------------------------------ Sujit Patwardhan <a href="mailto:sujit@vsnl.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> sujit@vsnl.com</a> <a href="mailto:sujitjp@gmail.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> sujitjp@gmail.com</a> "Yamuna", ICS Colony, Ganeshkhind Road, Pune 411 007 India Tel: 25537955 ----------------------------------------------------- Hon. Secretary: Parisar <a href="http://www.parisar.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> www.parisar.org</a> ------------------------------------------------------ Founder Member: PTTF (Pune Traffic & Transportation Forum) <a href="http://www.pttf.net" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> www.pttf.net</a> ------------------------------------------------------