ON RICKSHAWS IN TWO WORLDS

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

This post in one of my favorite South Asian blogs, Sepia Mutiny, had this story:

"Calcutta will soon ban hand-pulled rickshaws. Is this a move to liberate the oppressed from their yoke, or just a clumsy attempt by the communists to eliminate an eyesore that is also a highly effective market based response to current transportation inefficiencies?"

Now, Calcutta (aka Kolkota) is one of the biggest, oldest cities in India, on par with Mumbai (or Bombay, which I talked about in a recent post on relative rainfalls between Mumbai and New York). 

The post quotes the Chief Minister, Mr. Bhattacharya, justifying this potential ban on the grounds:

“We have taken a policy decision to take the hand-drawn rickshaw off the roads of Calcutta on humanitarian grounds.  Nowhere else in the world does this practice exist and we think it should also cease to exist in Calcutta.”

Now, someone should offer to fly the Chief Minister to New York City.  As this post from Wired New York makes clear, pedicabs (aka rickshaws), have been a growth business in New York for the past few years.  These are cycle powered vs. the non-cycle version in Calcutta, but they are both 100% human powered.

I mean you can't walk around a tourist-centric area in the city without running into one of these things.  And the money is pretty good too, for the operators.

An American apparently did invent the rickshaw after all, back in 1848.  It ended up being one of our most popular "intellectual property" exports to China, India and other parts of South Asia in the latter part of the 19th century.  Rickshaws blossomed in use there, while they faded in the land of their origin.

Now, I know India is rapidly on its way to becoming an economic superpower over the next few decades, but the Chief Minister may be getting a little ahead of himself.  I mean maybe argue for and provide a financing/transition path to cycle powered rickshaws vs. the hand-pulled kind, but ban them altogether?

And in a broader context, is it that these are just anecdotal examples of two countries passing in the night?

Comments

[Raj Bala]

Speaking of humanitarian issues is Calcutta, I recently saw "Born Into Brothels." It's a must see for anyone remotely interested in lack of humanity in Calcutta's red light district.