By Firoz Bakht Ahmed
To a person like me who has spent the major portion of his life in the vintage streets and lanes of Shahjahanabad, or the Mughal-built Old Delhi, riding on horse carts and rickshaws, the blanket ban on cycle rickshaws by the Delhi High Court has come as a shock. I feel that courts that otherwise are doing yeomen service to the cause of justice at times pass orders that are not people-friendly.
May be for the Chandni Chowk traders, this initiative might come as a breather because they have been complaining about traffic congestion. But there are many for whom the decision sounds the death knell.
Mullaji, a rickshaw puller I know in the Chandni Chowk area, is shocked. Only recently he admitted his son in one of the English medium schools of the area, after saving from his daily earnings of around Rs.200. He is apprehensive about his son's future following the ban.
While people in the area clearly seem to be divided, the rickshaw pullers' voice, those whose daily bread is endangered, is going unheard.
Pedalling tirelessly, come rain, biting cold, winds or scorching sun, these hard working men tell heart-rending tales about how they support big families with ailing elders and children.
Even the tourists who relish cycle rickshaw rides are taken aback by the ban.
It is said there are around 580,000 rickshaws on Delhi roads. Of this, about 80,000 are only licensed. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), it is alleged, makes a huge sum of money from the illegal unlicensed rickshaws.
Chandni Chowk Sarv Vyapar Mandal, a trader association in Old Delhi, had filed in the Delhi High Court in February 2002 a petition seeking the restriction of the number of cycle rickshaws in the area, citing the fear that traffic in Chandni Chowk from Gauri Shankar Mandir to Fatehpuri is highly choked due to the presence of unlimited number of cycle rickshaws and unauthorized occupation of road by vendors.
As an activist from the walled city, I feel the association should have sought a viable solution to the traffic problem rather than a ban on the rickshaws. Many residents of the area feel that the ban is not justified because the elders, women and children rely on rickshaws to commute. Also people prefer open rickshaws to being dumped into crowded buses.
True "eco-friendly" buses are there now. But do they solve the problem? The traffic jams could also be due to the large number of private cars and auto-rickshaws. A whole lot of categories of vehicles might also be banned for environmental reasons. The notion that a cycle rickshaw generates more traffic congestion than a private car is unjustified and untenable. Moreover, the new buses meant for Chandni Chowk will have a problem of parking as well.
Cycle-Rickshaw Chalak Malik Sangharsh Association president Shashi Bhushan says the cycle rickshaws are now plying in Oxford in London, Paris municipality areas and Singapore.
In Delhi people need cycle rickshaws for transport, the pullers need them as a source of income. For the elderly women, sick and children, rickshaws are like independent cars on hire, as they like to travel freely for reason of comfort. The old and sick would be picked from their doorstep in narrow lanes and be dropped where a car or other transport cannot ply. As cycle rickshaws play an important role in short distance travel, banning them would be problematic for short distance commuters.
The court is also of the view that "plying of cycle rickshaws on Delhi roads by poor rickshaw pullers is against human dignity and it results in the exploitation of the poor people who as last resort take upon themselves the work of rickshaw pullers at the mercy of influential people owning such cycle rickshaws." Very true, but what about their livelihood now. It would have been a humane act if surrogate occupation was provided to them.
In Kolkata, the situation is far worse as the rickshaw pullers have to run bare feet on potholed roads but if they are deprived of their rickshaws out of a strange sympathy for their human dignity, they would have nothing to do other than begging.
It is better if the issue is subjected to public referendum. Rather than a blanket ban, need of the hour is to study the problem minutely. What the state government requires is that a policy be designed to regulate the rickshaws not only in Chandni Chowk but the whole of the walled city. It would be better to regulate a system with the help of NGOs and associations like Cycle-Rickshaw Chalak Malik Sangharsh Association.
After all, these rickshaws are an inveterate part of Chandni Chowk culture.
(Firoz Bakht Ahmed is a commentator on culture, heritage and Delhi history. He can be contacted at [email protected])