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Hand-pulled rickshaws get e-push - The Times of India
KOLKATA: The City of Joy is all set to lose an icon: the hand-pulled rickshaw. Keen to stamp out a means of transport that a large section of the city views as inhumane, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said her government would prepare a rehabilitation package to make it easy for the city's 6,000-odd rickshaw pullers to upgrade to battery-powered vehicles.
Her predecessor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, had attempted to do this around eight years ago but failed, in the absence of a viable alternative to the legions of men who still earn their livelihood by pulling other men.
"Rickshaw-pullers' unions had approached me with demands. Our government has decided to prepare a rehabilitation package that will enable them to switch to green cars," Mamata said on Monday. Her reference was apparently to electric rickshaws that have become a popular mode of transport in Howrah, the suburbs and other district towns. Transport secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay has been entrusted with the task of working out the rehabilitation package.
The two-wheeled cart drawn by a runner that can seat two passengers was first introduced in Japan way back in mid-19th century. But they really became popular from around 1870, when the Tokyo government issued a permission to build and sell rickshaws (jinrikisha, as it was known then). Easy to manoeuvre through congested lanes and inexpensive where human labour was cheap and in abundance, it soon became popular in China and other South-East Asian cities. It was the Chinese who brought the vehicle to Kolkata in the late 19th century.
Now, more than a century later, Kolkata is the only city in the world where rickshaws still ply regularly on the streets. At most other places, rickshaws have become an embarrassment of sorts. In Kolkata, for example, it's undoubtedly still a popular mode of transport and provides a means of livelihood to so many, but the rickshaw's symbol of a feudalistic order does not sit easily with the image of a modern city.
While rickshaw pullers did not oppose a phase-out so long as they were properly rehabilitated, they didn't consider their job degrading. In fact, some take pride in being able to ferry people through Kolkata's waist-deep waterlogged streets and in narrow alleys, where no other vehicle dare to venture.
Ironically, it was Trinamool that had opposed the rickshaw's phase-out when the Left Front government had moved The Calcutta Hackney Carriage (Amendment) Bill, 2006. The amendment ultimately went through during a boycott by
Trinamool Congress MLAs. Licencing was stopped but rickshaws continued to ply, backed by powerful union leaders. When Sovan Chatterjee became KMC mayor in 2010, he announced a decision to issue photo ID cards to the pullers, giving the mode of transport a fresh lease of life.
Now, however, Mamata clearly wants it to go. It makes sense, given that e-rickshaws would be more in sync with Kolkata's traffic management plan. To facilitate the switchover, both rickshaw owners and pullers will come under the ambit of the rehabilitation package. But negotiating the numbers hurdle would be tough. While 5,697 hand-pulled rickshaws were last registered with KMC and 285 pullers were registered with Kolkata Police, rickshaw unions claim there are 24,000 pullers in the city with 1.2 lakh dependents.
There are other issues. These include the size and cost of vehicles, cost of operation, route alignments and roads on which they will be allowed to ply. At present, there are restrictions on some roads in the city for hand-pulled as well as cycle rickshaws. "The hand-pulled rickshaws cannot be phased out overnight. The process will take time," a transport department official said.
In Rajarhat New Town, the Housing Infrastructure Development Authority (Hidco) has been working on introduction of battery driven three-wheelers and even hosted a meeting of bankers, manufacturers, engineers and West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) to take it forward. Bankers have, in principle, agreed to grant a loan of up to 85% to prospective buyers. The e-rickshaws that are proposed for Rajarhat will cost around Rs 1.10 lakh each.
