Standing with his cycle rickshaw, Chandesar Ram looks with annoyance at the e-rickshaw nearby. Like him, three other rickshaw-wallahs wait at the same corner. The sole small “e-rickshaw”, a three-wheeled vehicle that runs on batteries, is filled almost to capacity with three passengers sitting inside.
This is the fifth summer Chandesar has spent riding a cycle rickshaw since he moved to Delhi 20 years ago from Madhubani in Bihar. As the mid-day sun beat down on his back, the 31 year-old cursed not the hot sun but new technology that has made his work doubly hard.
“Since this e-rickshaw started last summer, my income is down by half,” said Chandesar, short and slender, with a thin moustache. "I drop passengers right till their door-step, but still they prefer the e-rickshaw. They say it is the speed that matters."
Cruel heat
Trying to ensure that his daily income doesn't drop below the Rs 500-Rs 600 that he made before the arrival of the e-rickshaw has meant starting the day early, finishing late, and going longer distances looking for more customers. Some weeks, working without breaks for several days, Chandesar pedals 20-25 kilometres to far-off Nangloi, Bahadurgarh, Peeragarhi to look for better business.
Last May, he fell unconscious on the road after cycling for hours.“Loo lag gayi mujhe,” he said. It was a heatstroke, from the hot and dry afternoon winds common in this season in north India. A friend who was riding a cycle rickshaw in Wazirpur rushed him to a government hospital where he received intravenous fluids for a few hours. “I took four days off from work then,” he recounted. This summer, to avoid a repeat, he stops to drink water regularly from public taps.
Making it in the city
Two decades ago, Chandesar Ram, then all of 11 years old, arrived in Delhi, traveling alone in buses from Bihar to Uttar Pradesh. He first found work as a domestic worker cleaning floors in a house in Shalimar Bagh. A few months later, he had found a job of his liking, as what he described as a “saleman” for the Ajanta press in north Delhi.
“I drove the company's Maruti 800, carrying the magazines and papers the press had published to the offices to which we sold the publications ” he recounted. “I did this for 15 years. I was earning Rs 400 every day in my last year.”
Five years ago, when the press closed down, Chandesar received only his wage for that day. “There were 200-250 workers there, some got a severance payment,” he said. “What would I have got? Nothing. I was a casual worker. Mera haq nahin banta tha. It was not my right.”
Now, he leaves his one-room tenement where he lives with his wife and three small school-going children at 8 am every day. In the first half, he works five hours straight before returning home to eat his lunch and to rest in the afternoon. Starting again at 2 pm, he pedals seven more hours till 9 pm. After working 12 hours, a good day's income is Rs 500-Rs 600. On bad days, even cobbling together half of that is difficult.
Do speeding cars and buses give him a hard time on busy roads? Yes, but there's nothing more annoying than customers who argue "over every five rupees”.
“Say, they will catch a ride to the market. You will pedal and pedal for kilometres sometimes. Once there, they will spend Rs 250-Rs 300 buying fruits for themselves. But they will argue and harangue you to charge Rs 5 or Rs 10 less for the ride. I have often observed this," he noted with some disdain.
His concern about the competition from e-rickshaw plays on his mind, and he knows the contest for passengers will only get more fierce. There are more than one lakh e-rickshaws in Delhi already. The battery-operated rickshaws went off Delhi's roads for a few months last year when the Delhi High Court passed an order raising questions over their safety standards and legal status to qualify as a vehicle under the Motor Vehicles Act. With an amendment to this law in March, Parliament paved the way for their commercial operation in Delhi as well as elsewhere.
Chandesar speculates that he would do better if he had an e-rickshaw. It would be less strenuous too. The cycle rickshaw that he bought second-hand from an acquaintance five years ago cost Rs 4,000. But the e-rickshaw is priced twenty times higher, at Rs 85,000-Rs 90,000, which is too steep for him. "If I had one, I would work hard. I would recover at least half the cost in a matter of months," he said. For now, as the owner of a steel mill asks him if he would carry transport material for him, he offers his rickshaw to double up as a cart.
Check out the full Scroll series: Hot Jobs
This is the fifth summer Chandesar has spent riding a cycle rickshaw since he moved to Delhi 20 years ago from Madhubani in Bihar. As the mid-day sun beat down on his back, the 31 year-old cursed not the hot sun but new technology that has made his work doubly hard.
“Since this e-rickshaw started last summer, my income is down by half,” said Chandesar, short and slender, with a thin moustache. "I drop passengers right till their door-step, but still they prefer the e-rickshaw. They say it is the speed that matters."
Cruel heat
Trying to ensure that his daily income doesn't drop below the Rs 500-Rs 600 that he made before the arrival of the e-rickshaw has meant starting the day early, finishing late, and going longer distances looking for more customers. Some weeks, working without breaks for several days, Chandesar pedals 20-25 kilometres to far-off Nangloi, Bahadurgarh, Peeragarhi to look for better business.
Last May, he fell unconscious on the road after cycling for hours.“Loo lag gayi mujhe,” he said. It was a heatstroke, from the hot and dry afternoon winds common in this season in north India. A friend who was riding a cycle rickshaw in Wazirpur rushed him to a government hospital where he received intravenous fluids for a few hours. “I took four days off from work then,” he recounted. This summer, to avoid a repeat, he stops to drink water regularly from public taps.
Making it in the city
Two decades ago, Chandesar Ram, then all of 11 years old, arrived in Delhi, traveling alone in buses from Bihar to Uttar Pradesh. He first found work as a domestic worker cleaning floors in a house in Shalimar Bagh. A few months later, he had found a job of his liking, as what he described as a “saleman” for the Ajanta press in north Delhi.
“I drove the company's Maruti 800, carrying the magazines and papers the press had published to the offices to which we sold the publications ” he recounted. “I did this for 15 years. I was earning Rs 400 every day in my last year.”
Five years ago, when the press closed down, Chandesar received only his wage for that day. “There were 200-250 workers there, some got a severance payment,” he said. “What would I have got? Nothing. I was a casual worker. Mera haq nahin banta tha. It was not my right.”
Now, he leaves his one-room tenement where he lives with his wife and three small school-going children at 8 am every day. In the first half, he works five hours straight before returning home to eat his lunch and to rest in the afternoon. Starting again at 2 pm, he pedals seven more hours till 9 pm. After working 12 hours, a good day's income is Rs 500-Rs 600. On bad days, even cobbling together half of that is difficult.
Workers take a nap, others chat in their noon break nearby in Raja Park in Azadpur.
Do speeding cars and buses give him a hard time on busy roads? Yes, but there's nothing more annoying than customers who argue "over every five rupees”.
“Say, they will catch a ride to the market. You will pedal and pedal for kilometres sometimes. Once there, they will spend Rs 250-Rs 300 buying fruits for themselves. But they will argue and harangue you to charge Rs 5 or Rs 10 less for the ride. I have often observed this," he noted with some disdain.
His concern about the competition from e-rickshaw plays on his mind, and he knows the contest for passengers will only get more fierce. There are more than one lakh e-rickshaws in Delhi already. The battery-operated rickshaws went off Delhi's roads for a few months last year when the Delhi High Court passed an order raising questions over their safety standards and legal status to qualify as a vehicle under the Motor Vehicles Act. With an amendment to this law in March, Parliament paved the way for their commercial operation in Delhi as well as elsewhere.
Chandesar speculates that he would do better if he had an e-rickshaw. It would be less strenuous too. The cycle rickshaw that he bought second-hand from an acquaintance five years ago cost Rs 4,000. But the e-rickshaw is priced twenty times higher, at Rs 85,000-Rs 90,000, which is too steep for him. "If I had one, I would work hard. I would recover at least half the cost in a matter of months," he said. For now, as the owner of a steel mill asks him if he would carry transport material for him, he offers his rickshaw to double up as a cart.
Check out the full Scroll series: Hot Jobs
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