World’s Last Outpost of the Hand-pulled Rickshaw
Calcutta (Kolkata) is the last place on Earth where men still pull rickshaws.
Used mainly for short journeys through the city‘s central side streets, they remain an essential means of local transport for those too tired, burdened, sick or just too lazy to walk. Rickshaws have been a feature of Calcutta‘s road since the late 19th century, when they were introduced by the Chinese to carry goods. They became an officially approved means of local transport in 1919. There are thought to be around 18,000 hand-pulled rickshaws in the city, many of them unlicensed. The government has made several attempts to remove them, following complaints from human rights groups that they are inhuman. But the Calcutta Hand Rickshaw Pullers Union has, so far, successfully resisted all such attempts.
Life for rickshaw pullers is tough. They are at the bottom of the road transport hierarchy, which means that they are routinely cut up by impatient and aggressive motor vehicles. A rickshaw puller typically earns around $90 a month. Pounding the streets‘ rough surfaces in cheap sandals, or barefoot, sometimes in temperatures higher than 40°C, does little for the man‘s health. TB is another constant danger, a result of living in unhygienic conditions.
Bahadur Yadav is on the streets soon after dawn. He‘s lived in Calcutta for twenty years and knows little else than life as a rickshaw puller. He isn’t sure exactly how old he is — probably in his late thirties, he reckons.
‘I left my home in the neighboring state of Jharkand in my late teens,’ he says.
‘I used to work in the fields, growing rice and vegetables. But money was always a problem and I couldn’t really earn enough to make a decent living, let alone look after a family.
‘So I came to Calcutta to be a rickshaw puller. You can always find this kind of work here. Anyway, I can‘t do anything else.
‘I got married and have three sons and two daughters. They all live in the village with my wife. They’ve never been to Calcutta, but I go there four or five times a year to see them and help in the fields. It‘s about ten hours by train.
‘I carry all sorts of stuff in my rickshaw, not just people. Bricks and bags of cement for building sites. Big blocks of ice. Vegetables and fruits for market shops, and bags of shopping for people going home from the market. Sometimes even cupboards and fridges. Whatever fits in, I pull.
‘The worst passengers are the drunkards, because they keep falling off the rickshaw.
‘I finish around ten at night, have something to eat — chapattis and vegetable curry normally — then go back to the room I share with forty other rickshaw pullers. On a bad day, I go to bed thinking about money. Otherwise I think about home and the trees, the river, the hills and the bright green rice fields around the village. It‘s different from here.’
