On March 29, 2010, Manushi organized a rally of cycle rickshaw, trolley rickshaw and handcart pullers in collaboration with two unions of cycle, trolley rickshaws and handcart pullers to claim space for non-motorized vehicles on Delhi roads and to demand implementation of the historic 10th February 2010 Order of the Delhi Court which had come in response to a PIL filed by Manushi in 2007 challenging the bizarre restrictions and vicious regulations on the cycle rickshaw sector. The High Court gave a verdict in favour of radical policy reform in the licensing policy for cycle rickshaws and declared the existing restrictions on the cycle rickshaw sector as unconstitutional. Unfortunately, Chief Justice AP Shah, who gave this case the importance it deserved but never got before, retired soon after delivering this judgement.
There were many significant aspects to this rally. For the first time, elite citizens of Delhi marched in support of and alongside the much-despised rickshaw and hand cart pullers.
For the first time, cycle-rickshaw, handcart pullers got together on their own strength, led by a young team of organizers–Mustafa, Mahender Paswan and Rajendra Prajapati. Mahender Paswan is a trolley rickshaw puller and Prajapati a handcart puller. So far they have been brought on streets under the leadership of large rickshaw fleet owners. The two pullers’ unions that collaborated with Manushi made almost all the arrangements at their own cost, including setting up a stage at Rajghat, mobilizing pullers, putting up posters, distributing leaflets, making arrangements to provide drinking water for the marchers, and maintaining discipline so that traffic was not disrupted despite nearly 2500 pullers and nearly 100 rickshaws making their way through heavy traffic zones. Our rally did not disrupt regular traffic movement even for a minute.
Manushi’s contribution lay in bringing in eminent citizens, persuading the concerned officials to come and accept our Charter of Demands, getting police permission and devising and printing the banners and placards for the rally. The rally was organized at very short notice. We gave ourselves just one week to spread the word, make arrangements and handle police permission.
Manushi decided to take out a rally so soon after a favourable High Court order in our favour for the following reasons:
Confiscation of rickshaws and handcarts, the imposition of arbitrary fines and beatings of pullers by the police became more frequent and aggressive after the High Court Order, instead of being curbed. It seems as if the police officials and M.C.D staff want to teach us a lesson that Court’s verdict does not matter and that their tyrannical control would continue over the lives and livelihoods of rickshaw owners and pullers. This willful sabotage of the High Court order was causing a great deal of demoralization among people in the rickshaw trade. Letting all this go unquestioned would have emboldened all those vested interests that are unwilling to brook any policy reform.
We had witnessed similar sabotage when Prime Minister Vajpayee had announced a radical new policy for rickshaw pullers and street vendors in August 2001. Instead of implementing the reformed policy, the then Lt. Governor of Delhi, the Police Commissioner, the M.C.D Commissioner and the junior staff went overboard in making things worse for the cycle rickshaw sector. Almost all main roads of Delhi were banned for rickshaws and the licensing system became more restrictive and exploitative. The justification offered for this was that rickshaws as slow-moving vehicles slow down motorized traffic. But we argued in court that rickshaws cannot ply even within residential neighbourhoods without having to cross main arterial roads. (Details of the hitherto existing rickshaw policy and the new restrictions that came after 2001 are available at www.manushi.in)
Manushi approached the High Court for their legal rights even at that time but that petition died a natural death because the Bench did not take much interest in the case. In the meantime, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi managed to get a very adverse order against cycle rickshaws from the High Court. Therefore we felt it important to register our protest and communicate to the authorities concerned that this time around, with a strong High Court order declaring the existing policy as unconstitutional, we are determined to see honest implementation.
The Mayor of Delhi and the Traffic Police officials had announced their intention to challenge the High Court order in the Supreme Court. We felt we needed to get the message across to them that it would be against organized public opinion to violate the clear directions issued in the High Court’s judgment, and that this battle would witness the participation of influential citizens alongside the impoverished rickshaw pullers.
It came as a big morale booster for rickshaw pullers that Former Director-General of Punjab Police, Mr KPS Gill not only flagged off the rally but also presented the Charter of Demands on behalf of rickshaw and hand cart pullers to the Municipal Commissioner, the Mayor and Chief Secretary of Delhi.
The Chief Secretary of Delhi Govt, the Municipal Commissioner and the Mayor of Delhi came to accept the Charter of Demands at Rajghat instead of making us appear at their door as supplicants. The presence of the Mayor was especially significant since initially he had openly announced his hostility to the High Court Order by issuing a press statement that the Municipal Corporation of which he is the political head would challenge the High Court Order in the Supreme Court.
Another noteworthy feature was that three retired Army Generals—Major General Lakhwinder Singh, Lt General Bhopinder Singh and Major General Gupta, a former Secretary, Govt of India, Amitabha Pandey, eminent lawyers, doctors, academics and professionals joined the rally in addition to several students of Delhi University and Jawahar Lal Nehru University.
What was wrong with the Rickshaw Policy?: We challenged the discriminatory License Quota policy imposed on cycle rickshaws on the ground that there are no quotas on the number of cars, trucks and other motorized vehicles plying in urban centres even though they cause deadly air and noise pollution. But cycle rickshaw ownership is subject to severe controls and pitiful quotas. The quota was fixed at 600 during the 1960s; it was raised to 20,000 in 1976; and 50,000 in 1993, when the actual number plying was reported to be 4, 50,000.
In 1997, it was raised to 99,000. However, up to 2007, the MCD had issued 89,429 rickshaw licenses, nearly 10,000 less than the sanctioned quota. However, almost all of these licensed rickshaws also carry the stigma of “illegality.”
However, it is not just the unlicensed rickshaws which are treated as illegal. The web of illegality woven by the municipal bodies in India has made every single rickshaw illegal and liable to severe penalties. Here is a sample of the absurd regulations that govern this trade.
- The Cycle Rickshaw Bye-law”3(1) of 1960 and amended in 1992 mandates that one needs two kinds of licenses to ply a rickshaw: a) Puller’s License; b) Owner’s License. These two licenses are not available year-round on-demand, as is the case with licenses for motorized vehicles. Applications for these are invited as and when the municipal officials whimsically decide to do so. Applying for a rickshaw owner/ puller license is no guarantee of getting it. For example, since 2007, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has not issued a single owner or puller license, nor renewed old licenses. But the offence of one plying a rickshaw without the above mentioned two licenses is punishable with confiscation and destruction of the vehicle!
- The cycle rickshaw Bye-laws further mandate that“ …No person shall keep or ply for hire a cycle rickshaw in Delhi unless he himself is the owner thereof and holds a license granted in that behalf by the Commissioner, on payment of the fee, as may, from time to time, be fixed under sub-section (2) of section 430.” This in effect means that a person cannot own more than one rickshaw which he must ply himself. The absurdity and discrimination inherent in this clause become obvious if we consider that a person may own hundreds of trucks, buses and even jet planes but owning more than one cycle rickshaw is illegal. The punishment for owning more than one cycle rickshaw is confiscation and destruction of the vehicle!
- A person who owns a truck or bus or taxi may hire whoever he/she may like to ply that vehicle. But in the case of cycle rickshaws owner must himself be a puller. The punishment for letting another person, including your own brother ply your rickshaw is confiscation and destruction of the vehicle!
MCD officials have thus far justified their absurd “owner must be puller” policy using socialistic sounding rhetoric that they need to “protect” the poor and vulnerable pullers from the greed and exploitation of rickshaw owners—disparagingly referred to as “rickshaw dons”, thekedars or rickshaw mafia”. As per the propaganda war unleashed by the MCD officials and avidly absorbed by the media and socialist-minded activists, rickshaw owners represent a criminal type exploitative class of people, because they live off the rent charged from “poor pullers”. They have been able to get the Supreme Court and various High Courts of India to outlaw their existence by projecting them as anti-social elements who fleece the poor.
By enacting a law that prohibits a person from owning more than one rickshaw and by insisting that “the owner must also be puller” the government has in fact legislated that:
- A person who begins his life as a puller must die as a puller;
- The poor must remain, manual labourers, all their lives;
- The poor are not allowed to become even petty entrepreneurs.
Why Pullers Find it Impossible to Become Owners: MCD policy mandates that “Owner must be Puller” and vice versa, but 99 % of all cycle rickshaws are owned by entrepreneurs who own small or big fleets ranging from 5 to 500 rickshaws. Despite the pro puller rhetoric of the rickshaw policy, pullers are actively prevented by MCD staff from owning rickshaws by various devious means. In the last 15 years of working with the rickshaw trade, I have personally come across no more than 5 pullers who own their own passenger rickshaws. However, the per cent of owner pullers is relatively higher for trolley rickshaws that are used for carrying goods than for passenger rickshaws which are at present rented out at Rs 40 to 50 per day.
The “owner must be puller” policy is justified on high moral ground as being pro-poor. The reality is just the contrary – MCD employees make it virtually impossible for actual pullers to get licenses. This is because collecting bribes from pullers is a far more onerous job.
As seasonal migrants, pullers come and go as their situation demands. Even while in the city they are constantly on the move. Therefore, it is very difficult for municipal staff and the police to extort daily bribes from lakhs of floating population of pullers in the city. It is far easier for them to collect bribes from rickshaw fleet owners who have set places and workshops where their vehicles are parked at night and repaired during the day. It is also easy for them to keep a count of the vehicles owned by each fleet operator and collect monthly payments as well as be with feasted liquor, food and other gifts every now and then.
Getting a rickshaw license is almost impossible for a poor man because:
- Unlike registration for cars, trucks and buses rickshaw registration is not open all year round. It is open and shut arbitrarily every couple of years for 4-6 weeks as and when MCD pleases. Licenses don’t come without heavy bribes and cumbersome legal procedures. The vehicle is liable to confiscation and destruction if the puller does not succeed in getting a license.
- Impoverished pullers can neither afford the time required in getting a license nor the risks involved in owning a rickshaw. The vehicle can be confiscated for any flimsy reason, even if it is licensed.
- Pullers stay in the city for some months, save money and go home for some days or weeks. They have no way to keep their vehicles safe during their absence from the city. If they rent out or even let a family member drive their vehicle when they go to the village, it is liable to be confiscated. Even when they are in the city, most sleep on pavements or share small jhuggis with fellow migrants. They have no place to park their vehicle safely at night. To avoid the risk of losing the vehicle, pullers, therefore, find it convenient to rent from fleet owners who have relatively greater staying power on account of the multiple vehicles they own and the contacts they cultivate with the MCD staff and police.
- Both licensed and unlicensed rickshaws are confiscated under the guise of checking licenses. Rickshaw owners then run after municipal officials and try to strike a bargain so that they can get the vehicle released before it is entered in the record book. Even if it turns out that the man pulling the rickshaw is indeed the owner of the vehicle, he cannot get the vehicle released without paying a minimum penalty of Rs 325, that too if he manages to get the vehicle released the same day.
- Each day it stays in the municipal yard, the owner pays a store charge of Rs. 100 per day plus expenses on paperwork all of which amount to a minimum of Rs Rs 500-600 if the owner manages to get it released in a day or so.
- After 7 days the vehicle cannot be released. It is meant to be crushed and sold as junk.
- Even licensed rickshaws are routinely confiscated on the ground that they are causing road congestion. By contrast, cars or buses are never impounded simply because there is a traffic jam on the road.
- (For more pictorial details see a powerpoint presentation on cycle rickshaws at www.manushi.in
A documentary film entitled: Udarikaran: Kewal Oopar ka Udaar made in 1997 on the plight of rickshaw owners and pullers made by Madhu Kishwar is available on YouTube.)
The illegal status of cycle rickshaws makes their owners and pullers make them vulnerable to extortion on a variety of pretexts. Each rickshaw carries a code word to indicate who is responsible for paying a bribe for that rickshaw. In addition to regular monthly bribes, there is the regular loss of income due to confiscation, fines and destruction of vehicles. An unlicensed rickshaw once shown in official records as confiscated cannot be released even after paying fines. It has to be destroyed. For every rickshaw that is entered into municipal records as a confiscated rickshaw, at least 10 are released through payoffs demanded from rickshaw owners. If we add to it the bribes extorted by the municipal officials and the Traffic Police from each owner and puller on account of arbitrary entry bans on rickshaws in most parts of the City, based on information collected through interviews with pullers and owners, in Delhi alone the terror unleashed by the License-Quota-Raid-Raj on rickshaw-owners and pullers leads to loss of income through bribes and confiscation of rickshaws worth Rs 360 cores per year.
Problems in Getting Police Permission for the Rally: The big rickshaw contractors who have thus far dominated the scene were altogether missing from the scene. This is because a small group of rickshaw owners have acquired a vested interest in restrictive licenses because the municipal officials use them as their touts. All licenses are routed through them. Small fleet owners have to seek their patronage and protection or else their vehicles are specially targeted for confiscation. This group is most unhappy at the prospect of a liberalized licensing policy because that would eliminate their monopoly. They would rather work illegally through payoffs than allow easy entry to newcomers and small fleet owners.
Our original plan was to bring leading citizens of Delhi to march in support of and alongside pullers of cycle rickshaws, trolley rickshaws and hand carts. Three thousand of these non-motorized vehicles were to be tied together in a single line on the march to claim their right to the Delhi roads. This was to be an important symbolic challenge to the Traffic Police and Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which has banned them on all main roads of the City. This in effect makes their existence virtually illegal everywhere.
As with any and every procession, protest or rally we too had to apply for police permission. The drama that followed proved yet again that despite all trappings of democracy, the poor live and work virtually under police raj. This is how it went.
On March 22nd, I wrote a letter informing the Commissioner, Traffic Police that our rally would start from Red Fort and conclude at Gandhi Samadhi at Rajghat—a distance of about 3 kms. This request I knew would be the toughest hurdle for our rally since our campaign for demanding a more rational policy for non-motorized vehicles has faced the most determined hostility from the Delhi Police, who seem to have acquired a deeply vested interest in a regime of illegality that has kept the livelihoods of cycle rickshaw and hand cart pullers under their tyrannical hold. On 23rd March I received a message saying the permission was not likely to be granted. On 25th March 2010, I received a letter stating that “permission cannot be granted as the plying of cycle rickshaw is prohibited in the ring road.(sic)” Moreover, the police claimed that the procession would create inconvenience to other road users as it was a working day. Again on 26Th March 2010 a letter was received stating that “permission cannot be granted as the plying of cycle rickshaw is prohibited on the route of your profession”.
I personally went and met Jt. Commissioner of Police, Special Branch to try and assure him that our rally “would be perfectly disciplined, that we would stop at all red lights and the cycle rickshaws would go in a single file so as not to occupy more than a fraction of road space”. None of this worked.
At this point, we offered to only take one commuter rickshaw, one trolley rickshaw used for carrying goods and one handcart instead of 3000 handcarts and rickshaws as originally planned. Even this request was turned down. We were told that our “request has been considered but could not be acceded to in view of the orders of Hon’ble High Court which upheld that plying of rickshaws on Ring Road is not allowed”. I pointed out that thousands of rickshaws openly ply on that route despite the ban and that High Court had in any case taken a strong view against arbitrary bans. Moreover, the entire purpose of the rally was to claim road space for non-motorized vehicles- a right upheld by the High Court. It is noteworthy that the police are very eager to invoke all orders of the High Court which bolster their arbitrary powers but steadfastly ignore or sabotage Court orders which favour rickshaw pullers.
All our pleadings met with a firm “No!” I felt foolish for having mentioned that we would be marching behind cycle rickshaws because had we kept quiet about it, we would have had no trouble, as later experience demonstrated. We could well have taken a defiant attitude and offered to face the consequences of defying the ban. But the leaders of the rickshaw trolley owners-pullers union were mortally afraid of getting their vehicles confiscated and getting the usual danda treatment. They felt this would further demoralize the already terrorized and harassed rickshaw pullers and make it even more difficult for the union to mobilize the pullers for any future action.
Therefore, we yielded to the unreasonable requirements of the police that we march without bringing any non-motorized vehicles with us on the rally. However, that morning 100 odd rickshaws came in spontaneously and accompanied the rally. I expected the police to stop them but they were allowed without any fuss. However, their presence was as “illegal” as that of hundreds of other rickshaws plying on that road. The police refused permission for rickshaws to accompany the marchers legally but looked the other way when they plied illegally.
We chose Rajghat as our destination to remind our politicians that Mahatma Gandhi who led the freedom movement had repeatedly warned his countrymen and women that freedom of India from colonial rule did not just mean ousting the British from positions of power, it meant dismantling the oppressive laws and regulations they institutionalized for enslaving and exploiting the people of India- a task consistently ignored by our ruling elite.
Everyone who participated in or witnessed the rally was impressed with the disciplined way in which the rally moved despite the palpable anger and burning resentment among pullers at the brutal treatment they face on the roads at the hand of the police every day.
At Rajghat, the rally was addressed by union leaders of trolley rickshaws and hand cart pullers–Mahender Paswan, Rajendra Prajapati, Vijay Kashyap and Mustafa ji. Others who joined to lend them support were– Dalit leader and founder president of Justice Party, Dr Udit Raj, Arya Samaj Leader Swami Agnivesh, Magsayasay awardee “Waterman”, Rajendra Singh of Tarun Bharat Sangh, Dr. Pramod Kumar, Director St. Stephens Hospital Community Health Deptt., Advocate Indira Unninayar, Maj. Gen. Lakhvinder Singh, Lt. Gen. Bhopinder Singh, Amitabha Pandey, former Secretary Govt of India and KPS Gill. (Their brief statements can be viewed on YouTube).
While accepting our Charter of Demands, Dr. Kanwar Sain said he was not in favour of destroying livelihoods and was willing to discuss the issue and find acceptable solutions. Manushi sent him a letter soon after requesting an appointment and offering to make a detailed presentation to apprise him of the ground reality.
Chief Secretary Rakesh Mehta informed the rickshaw pullers that the Special Task Force constituted by the Delhi government following the orders of the High Court would ensure that non-motorized vehicles got their legitimate space on Delhi Roads.
The Task Force held its first meeting on 2nd April 2010. Its members include:
1. Rakesh Mehta, Chief Secretary, Delhi- Chairman
2. R.K. Verma Secy-cum-Commissioner (TPT.)- Member Secretary
3. Suvashish Choudhary, DCP (Traffic)- Member
4. B.K Jain, Addl. Commr. (Plg.) DDA- Member
5. H. Ranganathan, Consultant, CES, India Pvt. Ltd.- Member
6. T.K Malhotra, President, AAI-Member
7. Gitam Tewari, Associate Professor, IIT Delhi-Member
8. Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science & Environment- Member
9. Paromita Roy(UTTIPEC)- Member
10. Pradeep Sachdeva, Architect & Urban Planner- Member
11. Madhu Kishwar, Manushi- Member
Since the team consists of 3 leading urban planners, an independent traffic expert from IIT Delhi, a leading environmentalist and a Manushi representative, this makes for a strong group capable of not only giving a good fight to all those who are out to sabotage policy reforms for cycle rickshaws but also has extremely talented urban planners and non-police traffic experts who can actually offer creative road designs and workable solutions for the present chaos on roads while providing equitable road space for pedestrians and users of non-motorized vehicles.
Much, however, depends on the attitude of the High Court judge who has taken over the case from Justice AP Shah. If he lets the Traffic Police and other vested interests hijack the issue, we could be back to square one!