THOMPSON: For some its Indias black hole of poverty. For others, its the City of Joy. The British largely created it and called it Calcutta. Recently its been reinvented as Kolkata.
This city of 14 million has long conjured clichés of humanitys epic struggle for dignity, amidst grinding poverty. None more so than the Rickshaw wallahs barefoot human beasts of burden fighting for their very existence on the citys streets.
If ever there was a labour intensive job, this is it. In blistering heat and tropical rain, they battle for road space in some of the most lethal traffic anywhere in the world.
MOHAMMAD ALI: It might be rainy or it might be sunny but for the sake of our survival we do not feel the sun or the heat or the rain we just walk barefoot. Why? To earn a few rupees.
THOMPSON: Being a rickshaw wallah may appear humiliating even inhumane but for those prepared to shoulder this laden existence, its also been guaranteed employment, skills and knowledge often passed on from father to son. Not anymore, as Kolkata is pulled into the 21st century, its rickshaw wallahs are being left behind.
The wallahs claim this is the last city on earth where human powered rickshaws remain a formidable force. They were introduced to Kolkata by Chinese immigrants more than a century ago. Now 80% of the citys eighteen thousand rickshaw wallahs are economic refugees from an even poorer existence in West Bengals impoverished neighbouring state of Bihar.
MOHAMMAD ALI: Bihar has no jobs, no source of livelihood. Whatever the scene in Kolkata it has provided me bread and butter.
THOMPSON: Mohammad Ali may not look like his heavy weight name sake but he sure knows how to tackle a hefty human load. Since leaving Bihar, the sixty year old has trudged Kolkatas streets for 35 years.
MOHAMMAD ALI: Kolkata is a place of opportunities. If we had got jobs in Bihar we would not have come to Kolkata.
THOMPSON: For the citys residents, the rickshaws are a non polluting form of transport that even the poor can afford. Used as human cart horses, or as a one man ambulance waiting on every street corner, many believe their services are irreplaceable.
Its the morning rush hour at the prestigious South Point High School. Buses drop off loads of kids but for those who live too close or off the bus routes altogether, hand rickshaws are one of the few ways of getting kids to class.
INDIAN MOTHER OF CHILD AT SCHOOL: Hand rickshaw is the main way when I am coming from my home to school. So it is very essential for a lot of middle class people. So I need this one very much.
THOMPSON: In a country with one of the worlds fastest growing economies, Kolkata is at a cross roads and the rickshaw wallahs are in the crosshairs of the men who run the city. For almost thirty years Kolkatas city hall has been controlled by communists who have staunchly resisted modernisation. Now they are behind Indias push to give rickshaw pullers the shaft.
BIKASH RANJAN BHATTACHARYA: [Mayor, Kolkata] With the change of time, we have to accept the most open and rational attitude towards the exploitation of the human labour and keeping that in mind, I believe everybody would agree that this hand cart rickshaw pulling is something which ought to have been stopped and it has been stopped.
THOMPSON: Kolkatas image as the saviour of Indias desperately poor has been immortalised on the silver screen.
MOVIE FOOTAGE: [Male in movie running to rickshaw owner] Come quickly! Follow him quickly!
GEORGE: The Hindi classic, Do Bigha Zamin, tells the story of a man forced off his land and into Kolkatas slums and a perilous life as a rickshaw wallah.
MOVIE FOOTAGE: [Male in movie to rickshaw owner] Move faster faster!
GEORGE: In an age when Marxists are hitching their cart to globalisation and chasing the money men, such images of backwardness are being cast into the past.
BIKASH RANJAN BHATTACHARYA: The basic inhuman part of it is that one human being is really pulling the others on his shoulder. This itself is inhuman. That should be stopped. When you talk of the human rights, this is the era of human rights, then we must also think of the human rights of those rickshaw pullers.
THOMPSON: Kolkata attempted to ban the practice in 1996 blaming the rickshaws for clogging up the citys already congested streets. The pullers fought off that challenge and now in their dilapidated union office, you can find Mohammad Alis comrades hatching a battle plan once again.
UNION BOSS: Weve seen many governments in West Bengal. They keep telling us that theyll ban the rickshaw and weve responded with protests. Weve successfully kept it on the streets and its still there. The passengers need it. We obviously want it to stay. Whatever the government says, well fight the ban and continue our struggle.
THOMPSON: But waiting on every corner is another ever growing threat to the rickshaw wallahs welfare Kolkatas yellow peril the hordes of taxis careering through the streets. The taxi drivers have little room for error and even less sympathy for the rickshaw wallahs.
TAXI DRIVER: [To rickshaw owner] Hey! Are you blind, or what? [To Thompson] When Im driving, suddenly theres a rickshaw zigzagging in front of me, so I blow my taxi horn. He says, cant you drive along on one side? Why are you honking? I open my door and get out. So does he. Its a face-off between us. Fights are about to begin.
THOMPSON: Invariably the rickshaw wallahs are on the losing end.
MOHAMMAD ALI: A wrong move results in a fight and the rickshaw gets confiscated by the police. Thats a blow for us as it results in loss of work.
THOMPSON: As if life as a Kolkata rickshaw wallah wasnt hard enough.
MOHAMMAD ALI: Yes, its not right. Its a man carrying another man on his back. Here blood is being burned fuel is used to run other vehicles, but this one uses a mans blood. You have to use every bit of strength in your body.
THOMPSON: Ali is lucky to earn a few dollars a day. Half goes to his family in Bihar and a quarter goes to the rickshaws owner via a middleman broker. A bribe demanded by corrupt police can easily see a days work wiped out. That leaves just a few cents for Alis food and lodgings.
MOHAMMAD ALI: We never eat to our hearts content, we never have enough to cover our bodies, we cant relax, there is tension all around. On one hand youre thinking about your kids and on the other youre thinking about the broker breathing down your neck. There are a thousand tensions.
THOMPSON: Three quarters of the citys pullers work more than 12 hours a day and each night they return to a hole in the wall like this, also owned by the broker who provides the rickshaw. For ten months out of twelve, this is where Ali sleeps, returning home to his family for only a few months a year.
MOHAMMAD ALI: My body is already telling me to give it up now dont pull the rickshaw. But its sheer helplessness that keeps me going sheer helplessness. The doctor says youre sick, your livers gone, your lungs are gone, you are weak, you dont have enough blood.
THOMPSON: Most rickshaw wallahs are uneducated, illiterate and aged over 45.
MOHAMMAD ALI: If the government is adamant about removing rickshaws then give us jobs. Give us work according to our age. And if you dont want to give us jobs, give us a pension give us a pension. I gave my entire youth to pulling rickshaws. What new work will I do in my old age?
THOMPSON: While the rickshaw wallahs union fights the government in the courts, the aging wallahs population is signing up in record numbers, hoping for alternative employment or government compensation.
BIKASH RANJAN BHATTACHARYA: It should have been done away with much, much long back. Now the government has taken a very positive decision that they be replaced with alternative arrangements so that they can earn their livelihood and this process is going on for next three, four months to come they be given alternative arrangement for their livelihood and this rickshaw pulling from Kolkata will be a part of history.
UNION BOSS: The poor always suffer at the hands of the government. We are doubtful about the assurances of alternative livelihood and compensation. We have serious doubt.
RICKSHAW MAN SINGING: Why does your heart worry about sorrow? Sorrow is our companion. Sorrow comes and goes.
THOMPSON: For Kolkatas remade communist bureaucracy, this part of the proletariat has proven dispensable.
SINGING: Without rickshaws new miseries would dog our people. Empty stomach is the reason for our grief.
THOMPSON: Exploitation or tradition ugly or iconic this is one face of India which the City of Joy no longer wants to show the world.
This city of 14 million has long conjured clichés of humanitys epic struggle for dignity, amidst grinding poverty. None more so than the Rickshaw wallahs barefoot human beasts of burden fighting for their very existence on the citys streets.
If ever there was a labour intensive job, this is it. In blistering heat and tropical rain, they battle for road space in some of the most lethal traffic anywhere in the world.
MOHAMMAD ALI: It might be rainy or it might be sunny but for the sake of our survival we do not feel the sun or the heat or the rain we just walk barefoot. Why? To earn a few rupees.
THOMPSON: Being a rickshaw wallah may appear humiliating even inhumane but for those prepared to shoulder this laden existence, its also been guaranteed employment, skills and knowledge often passed on from father to son. Not anymore, as Kolkata is pulled into the 21st century, its rickshaw wallahs are being left behind.
The wallahs claim this is the last city on earth where human powered rickshaws remain a formidable force. They were introduced to Kolkata by Chinese immigrants more than a century ago. Now 80% of the citys eighteen thousand rickshaw wallahs are economic refugees from an even poorer existence in West Bengals impoverished neighbouring state of Bihar.
MOHAMMAD ALI: Bihar has no jobs, no source of livelihood. Whatever the scene in Kolkata it has provided me bread and butter.
THOMPSON: Mohammad Ali may not look like his heavy weight name sake but he sure knows how to tackle a hefty human load. Since leaving Bihar, the sixty year old has trudged Kolkatas streets for 35 years.
MOHAMMAD ALI: Kolkata is a place of opportunities. If we had got jobs in Bihar we would not have come to Kolkata.
THOMPSON: For the citys residents, the rickshaws are a non polluting form of transport that even the poor can afford. Used as human cart horses, or as a one man ambulance waiting on every street corner, many believe their services are irreplaceable.
Its the morning rush hour at the prestigious South Point High School. Buses drop off loads of kids but for those who live too close or off the bus routes altogether, hand rickshaws are one of the few ways of getting kids to class.
INDIAN MOTHER OF CHILD AT SCHOOL: Hand rickshaw is the main way when I am coming from my home to school. So it is very essential for a lot of middle class people. So I need this one very much.
THOMPSON: In a country with one of the worlds fastest growing economies, Kolkata is at a cross roads and the rickshaw wallahs are in the crosshairs of the men who run the city. For almost thirty years Kolkatas city hall has been controlled by communists who have staunchly resisted modernisation. Now they are behind Indias push to give rickshaw pullers the shaft.
BIKASH RANJAN BHATTACHARYA: [Mayor, Kolkata] With the change of time, we have to accept the most open and rational attitude towards the exploitation of the human labour and keeping that in mind, I believe everybody would agree that this hand cart rickshaw pulling is something which ought to have been stopped and it has been stopped.
THOMPSON: Kolkatas image as the saviour of Indias desperately poor has been immortalised on the silver screen.
MOVIE FOOTAGE: [Male in movie running to rickshaw owner] Come quickly! Follow him quickly!
GEORGE: The Hindi classic, Do Bigha Zamin, tells the story of a man forced off his land and into Kolkatas slums and a perilous life as a rickshaw wallah.
MOVIE FOOTAGE: [Male in movie to rickshaw owner] Move faster faster!
GEORGE: In an age when Marxists are hitching their cart to globalisation and chasing the money men, such images of backwardness are being cast into the past.
BIKASH RANJAN BHATTACHARYA: The basic inhuman part of it is that one human being is really pulling the others on his shoulder. This itself is inhuman. That should be stopped. When you talk of the human rights, this is the era of human rights, then we must also think of the human rights of those rickshaw pullers.
THOMPSON: Kolkata attempted to ban the practice in 1996 blaming the rickshaws for clogging up the citys already congested streets. The pullers fought off that challenge and now in their dilapidated union office, you can find Mohammad Alis comrades hatching a battle plan once again.
UNION BOSS: Weve seen many governments in West Bengal. They keep telling us that theyll ban the rickshaw and weve responded with protests. Weve successfully kept it on the streets and its still there. The passengers need it. We obviously want it to stay. Whatever the government says, well fight the ban and continue our struggle.
THOMPSON: But waiting on every corner is another ever growing threat to the rickshaw wallahs welfare Kolkatas yellow peril the hordes of taxis careering through the streets. The taxi drivers have little room for error and even less sympathy for the rickshaw wallahs.
TAXI DRIVER: [To rickshaw owner] Hey! Are you blind, or what? [To Thompson] When Im driving, suddenly theres a rickshaw zigzagging in front of me, so I blow my taxi horn. He says, cant you drive along on one side? Why are you honking? I open my door and get out. So does he. Its a face-off between us. Fights are about to begin.
THOMPSON: Invariably the rickshaw wallahs are on the losing end.
MOHAMMAD ALI: A wrong move results in a fight and the rickshaw gets confiscated by the police. Thats a blow for us as it results in loss of work.
THOMPSON: As if life as a Kolkata rickshaw wallah wasnt hard enough.
MOHAMMAD ALI: Yes, its not right. Its a man carrying another man on his back. Here blood is being burned fuel is used to run other vehicles, but this one uses a mans blood. You have to use every bit of strength in your body.
THOMPSON: Ali is lucky to earn a few dollars a day. Half goes to his family in Bihar and a quarter goes to the rickshaws owner via a middleman broker. A bribe demanded by corrupt police can easily see a days work wiped out. That leaves just a few cents for Alis food and lodgings.
MOHAMMAD ALI: We never eat to our hearts content, we never have enough to cover our bodies, we cant relax, there is tension all around. On one hand youre thinking about your kids and on the other youre thinking about the broker breathing down your neck. There are a thousand tensions.
THOMPSON: Three quarters of the citys pullers work more than 12 hours a day and each night they return to a hole in the wall like this, also owned by the broker who provides the rickshaw. For ten months out of twelve, this is where Ali sleeps, returning home to his family for only a few months a year.
MOHAMMAD ALI: My body is already telling me to give it up now dont pull the rickshaw. But its sheer helplessness that keeps me going sheer helplessness. The doctor says youre sick, your livers gone, your lungs are gone, you are weak, you dont have enough blood.
THOMPSON: Most rickshaw wallahs are uneducated, illiterate and aged over 45.
MOHAMMAD ALI: If the government is adamant about removing rickshaws then give us jobs. Give us work according to our age. And if you dont want to give us jobs, give us a pension give us a pension. I gave my entire youth to pulling rickshaws. What new work will I do in my old age?
THOMPSON: While the rickshaw wallahs union fights the government in the courts, the aging wallahs population is signing up in record numbers, hoping for alternative employment or government compensation.
BIKASH RANJAN BHATTACHARYA: It should have been done away with much, much long back. Now the government has taken a very positive decision that they be replaced with alternative arrangements so that they can earn their livelihood and this process is going on for next three, four months to come they be given alternative arrangement for their livelihood and this rickshaw pulling from Kolkata will be a part of history.
UNION BOSS: The poor always suffer at the hands of the government. We are doubtful about the assurances of alternative livelihood and compensation. We have serious doubt.
RICKSHAW MAN SINGING: Why does your heart worry about sorrow? Sorrow is our companion. Sorrow comes and goes.
THOMPSON: For Kolkatas remade communist bureaucracy, this part of the proletariat has proven dispensable.
SINGING: Without rickshaws new miseries would dog our people. Empty stomach is the reason for our grief.
THOMPSON: Exploitation or tradition ugly or iconic this is one face of India which the City of Joy no longer wants to show the world.