Human worth
Recently during my trip to Pune via Mumbai and back, I had some such firsthand
experience of facts which are not only of concern to one and all but also show
how much different perspectives people might have exactly on the same set of
problems.
I was invited as the President of National RTI Forum at a Seminar in a
management Institute by the name of Sadhana, being run by Prof M V Pillai at
Poone. For this I went from Lucknow to Mumbai via a flight and came back the
same way but luckily I had the opportunity to go Mumbai to Poona and back on
cab. And incidentally, on the two routes I had different drivers- one from
Maharashtra and one from Bihar.
By habit, I had conversations with both of them. While the initial conversation
was general in nature, by curiosity very soon I came to the insider-outsider
issue. The person who took me to Poone
from Mumbai was a native of Poone. It
started with a large number of posters of a prominent politician replete with
Birth-day wishes. I asked him what he thought about him. The cab-driver was all
praise for him. He said that this person had done a lot for the people from
Maharashtra.
Then I asked him what he thought about the very large number of people from
other parts of the country coming to Mumbai and getting settled down. He
replied- “Well, we don’t mind people coming but there is a problem these people
are creating.” When further queried, he said that these people are having
adverse effect on the labour market. They were willing to work for very lowly
amounts. Since they came to get some employment at any cost, they accepted any
wage that they could. Thus for a watchman, the monthly rate could be as low as
Rs. 2000 to 3000. Moreover these people had no family with them and hence they
were willing to remain at the workplace 24 hours, if they got any small place
in a corner to sleep. Thus, these people live a wretched life, working day and
night. Surely such a thing is adversely affecting the local people, because
they can’t work 24 hours, living with their families elsewhere not could they
afford to work at such paltry sums. This phenomenon had a very adverse effect
on the entire job market, at the lower end.
I saw much logic in what he was saying but when coming back I got another story
on the same context. This time the driver was from Darbhanga in Mithila region
of Bihar. When asked the same question, he said that it were the local people
who were responsible for their plight. If they did not work hard and sincerely,
who will keep them in job? After all, many local businessmen and industrialists
were preferring the people from outside to the local people. There must be some
reason for that. Then he started narrating the contributions made by outsider
people in and around Mumbai.
When asked about his own life, he narrated his one day in the following terms-
He had woken up at 3.30 ij the morning, after the daily rituals reached his
office at 7 AM, was assigned his job which he went on doing till 10 PM in the
night. At that time when he was thinking to get back to his Chawl, he suddenly
got an instruction to take a passenger from Airport to Poone. He reached Poone
at 3 AM in the night. Slept in the cab for 2 hours. Reached his Poone office at
6 and was told about me to be taken to Mumbai at 11 AM. slept for 3 hours in
the office and was now taking me back,. We reached Mumbai at around 4 PM. He
would have reported to the office by 5.30 PM and then the decision about his
further work would be intimated to him.
The story of the first driver was no different. He was also awake for some 24
hours. And they get a princely sum of Rs. 6000 per month for all this work. In
this money, they save a part for their family back home. And if they fall ill
and are absent for more than 4 days in a month they don’t get salary for those
days. If they are seek for a month or so, they have to take loan from
loan-sharks. And it takes nearly 6 months to pay them back. This process goes
on forever till the time their life’s journey ends- either through an
accelerated natural death or through some violence erupting out of
Insider-outsider issue.
Amitabh Thakur
IPS,
Currently at IIM Lucknow
# 94155-34526
