Kolkata’s Rickshaws #
Calvin Trillian does some reporting on Kolkata’s (Calcutta’s) person-powered rickshaws, and the government’s never-ceasing efforts to abolish them.
While I was in Kolkata, a magazine called India Today published its annual ranking of Indian states, according to such measurements as prosperity and infrastructure. Among India’s 20 largest states, Bihar finished dead last, as it has for four of the past five years. Bihar, a couple hundred miles north of Kolkata, is where the vast majority of rickshaw wallahs come from. Once in Kolkata, they sleep on the street or in their rickshaws or in a dera—a combination garage and repair shop and dormitory managed by someone called a sardar. For sleeping privileges in a dera, pullers pay 100 rupees (about $2.50) a month, which sounds like a pretty good deal until you’ve visited a dera.
(via Passport)
It’s also probably worth noting that Robert Kaplan takes a similar (but slightly bleaker and more coherent) tour through Kolkatta in The Atlantic.