A farmer in Delhi: Condemned to paddle cycle rickshaw for life

A farmer in Delhi: Condemned to paddle cycle rickshaw for life

(The article, based on my encounter with a farmer turned rickshaw puller in Dwarka, Delhi during my trip to Delhi in September 2013, was published in The South Asian Times.)

Rajendra Yadav earns his living by paddling his cycle-rickshaw. He works in Dwarka, a continuously growing suburb of Delhi. While riding his rickshaw on way to a nearby Metro train station I spoke to Yadav and got an insight into the life of a common man who depends upon his physical strength for survival in a constantly changing society dictated by economic factors.

Yadav told me he didn’t require a permit for transporting his passengers to and fro the nearby Metro Train Station on city roads, neither he needed to stop on red lights while dangerously maneuvering the maze of fast moving cars and other vehicles.

Yadav hails from Hajipur, Bihar, where he owns a small farm that provides food for family of four. Yadav spends around nine months in the city paddling his rickshaw while he is busy for the rest of the year looking after his farm in his village. He supervises the crop plantation during the cultivating season and hands it over to his sons and wife to look after before he travelling back to Delhi for earning some cash. When the crops got ready to be reaped Yadav would go back to his village to manage the crop. “We grow enough food to support my family for the year”, he said. “I must earn some cash to pay for my education of my son so I came to Delhi to work as a rickshaw-puller.”

Yadav couldn’t graduate form his secondary school. However, he was able to finance his elder son’s education, who already graduated from high school. “I must earn enough to help my son continue his education further”, he asserted.

He said the rickshaw cost him Rupees 12,000 the amount he already paid off. “Fortunately, I don’t have any debt”, he said with a shy of relief.

Twenty years ago Yadav left his village as a non-Matric (one who couldn’t pass the secondary exam.) looking for a job and reached Chitaranjan Township, a locomotive township located on the border of West Bengal and Bihar. He failed to get an employment in the government-run factory but decided to stay there doing casual jobs which paid him too little to save for future. After living in Chitaranjan for more than a decade he decided to move to Delhi hoping to earn better wages. He arrived in Delhi and followed the footsteps of other less-educated migrants from Bihar, who were engaged in pulling rickshaws for a living. Yadav also bought a rickshaw for himself. His life now revolves around Delhi and Hajipur, between a manual job and farming.

Yadav worries for his future. He looks at the years ahead as an ageing man with decreasing physical strength for pulling a rickshaw as efficiently as he currently did. He is also worried about the possibilities of a disease that might hamper his abilities to work and helpless to pay for medical expenses.

“A healthy person can’t pull a rickshaw, loaded with two passengers, for more than three hours at a stretch”, he confessed. He takes rest frequently while waiting for the next passenger. He said he preferred to wait outside schools so he could transport young children after the schools were over. It takes less effort to transport kids but enables him earn better wages.

Laborers like Yadav, who form the lower strata of working class in India, are not covered under healthcare insurance. They must pay for their medical expenses.

What will happen if Yadav fell ill? How would he pay for his medical expenses? Yadav prays for a healthy life so he could pull his rickshaw as long as he could.

For the time being Yadav is handling his economy efficiently to protect himself from unknown debts. Though he is not guaranteed a secure life, as he grows older he has no option that to paddle has rickshaw in the maddening traffic of Delhi as long as he can paddle for three hours without getting exhausted.

The growing economy of India offers a source of income attractive enough for a farmer from rural India to migrate into its urban hub without any guarantee for a secure future.