Republic of India Livelihoods in intermediate towns

Appendix 2. Descriptive Accounts of Non-farm Occupations

2.1 Drivers and Transport:

2.1.1: Rajnagar Railway station, Satghara and Autorickshaw stand, Bhagwatipur: The growth in automobiles and in road connectivity is also strikes one’s sight while movong around the landscapes of Bihar. While in Satghara, alighting at the Rajnagar railway station from Madhubani, we were greeted by the sight of half a dozen autorickshaws lined up outside the entrance. The drivers were sat inside them, waiting for passengers to get on board. However most of those who got off from the train on the railway station took to cycle rickshaws or headed out into town on their own. Even as we walked around the complex circumscribing the railway station, the autorickshaws stayed put, and the drivers seemed to loiter around the complex with the knowledge that no one would actually get on to them. For the few hours that we spent there, not one autorickshaw drove out. And that, according to the drivers, was how most of their days went.

However, on the specific occasions when the long distance train from Punjab and Delhi arrives, business for them looks up. People from Satghara and nearby villages, who move to various destinations outside Bihar in search for work and livelihoods, use the autorickshaws to go home when they arrive. ‘It is usually on such occasions that we get customers, nobody who lives in Satghara uses the auto (rickshaw) ordinarily’. All of these autorickshaws were purchased on loans by various banks – the Indian Overseas Bank, the State Bank of India, which have been paid off. Most of these drivers are former migrants, who have since returned to Satghara and now eke a living as autorickshaw drivers. Out of a nearly dozen drivers we spoke with, the set represented a varied mix of caste and livelihood backgrounds. ‘Drivery’ hence emerges as one of the more (caste) secular professions in the contemporary non-farm economy.

The Rajnagar railway station also has a parking stand for motorcycles and bicycles. Daily and frequent commuters park their vehicles for the day at this stand for a fee of five rupees. During our visit, the parking lot was full with over a hundred and fifty bicycles and a dozen motorcycles, which belonged to the frequent commuters. As the day of our visit coincided with a Sunday, the contractor told us that these numbers increased during other days of the week when all the shops in the main town are open for business.
Bhagwatipur does not have a rail line connecting it, unlike Satghara. Also, unlike Satghara, there is no defined autorickshaw stand within or without the market. Towards the two ends of the stretch of the main road that marks the spread of Bhagwatipur, autorickshaw drivers gather at the beginning and the end of the day to collect passengers. Conversations at these two junctures revealed a high proportion of Muslim autorickshaw drivers (considering the higher proportion of Muslim population in Bhagwatipur), most of whom were former migrants and had also bought the autorickshaws through loans via banks. Most of the current drivers had also worked as drivers as migrants in cities like Delhi and Mumbai and wanted to make use of the skill once they returned. Thirty year old Mohammad Noor Alam said,
I learnt the skill of ‘drivery’ while I was outside, that is all I know. I don’t have any agricultural land. So what would I think of doing if I were to come back to the village? Buying an autorickshaw seemed like the most probable option, and that’s what I did.
However, the paucity of regular/daily passengers is a problem that all of the drivers at the Satghara station complained of. ‘We can stand here all day without moving’, said one of the auto drivers.

2.1.2: Taxi stand, Madhubani, towards Bhagwatipur: Situated at a distance of 13 kilometers from Madhubani, Bhagwatipur is easily accessible by shared taxis and autos that charge a maximum of Rs. 20 per passenger. They queue up near the railway station, on the other side, and are regulated by an informal arrangement that allows each vehicle a maximum of 25 minutes to fill in passengers after which it must leave so that the other taxis have a chance to do business as well. As we waited in the regutted jeep that we would take to Bhagwatipur, we got talking with a young man.

Zakir (name changed) is a young Muslim boy, all of 16 to 18, who learnt the trade of ‘drivery’ on the go. Given that he and his father are the only two able bodied men in the house, the other members of which constitute his mother and three sisters, the need to meet their financial requirements has fallen upon the two of them. His father currently lives in Delhi and works as a watchman. According to Zakir, he began working, first as a helper and then as a driver in Madhubani, which got him a chance to do so in Patna and Mumbai, once he moved from being a helper to a driver. As he said, ‘I went to Mumbai with a clan relative from the village but came of my own, once in the city’. He claimed to have had a fake driving license (as he was underage), which he used to work as a driver in Mumbai. Currently, Zakir owns and drives Tata Sumo Magic between Madhubani and the next 40 km at the most, and hopes to move back to the big city once again to be able to earn better.

Most of the drivers had moved from regutted jeeps and vans towards Tata Magic, financed by banks or by auto finance companies on an average EMI of Rs 12, 700 per month over a period of 36 months. As drivers at the stand told us, it meant that they had to earn a minimum of Rs. 450 per day to be able to pay off the loan over the required period of time. Previously, the jeeps were owned by the higher castes and rented out to the drivers. However there is a high increase in the numbers of owners-cum-drivers across a wide spectrum of castes. Most of these drivers are young men, who have lived and worked as drivers outside Bihar in areas like Mumbai, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Punjab - only to return to the village once they are married and have a family and leave once again when they have the choice and need to.

2.1.3: Madhubani Bus Stand: Madhubani is well connected to other towns and cities with an elaborate and frequent network of buses, both private and public. There are two bus stands in the town, public and private respectively. Among public buses, two air-conditioned Volvo buses leave Madhubani for Patna daily, once in the morning and once after noon. Most of these passengers are made up of students, tradesmen and government officials, the ones who can afford to pay for the comparatively expensive bus tickets. Reservations can also be made online as well, a facility provided by the Bihar State Road Transport Corporation (BSRTC), which is increasingly becoming popular among passengers.

However, it is the private bus stand, less than a kilometer away from the public bus stand that represents the extent of movement and mobility between destinations in Bihar. While we walked towards the bus stand, we were greeted by an uninterrupted supply of buses moving out of the stand towards their respective destinations, clearly marked out by tin sheets at the bottom right corner of the windscreen – Chhapra, Pandaul, Patna, Darbangha, Muzaffarpur, Samastipur, Hajipur. Packed with passengers, a bus left every couple of minutes, creating heavy traffic on the adjacent road, in the supply of a steady stream of buses. Local estimates had it that roughly 80 buses moved into and out of the bus stand each day, exacerbated on occasions of festivals and marriages. Frequent passengers were made up of those who lived and worked outside Madhubani but at a distance that they can travel over for a couple of days each week, students, those coming for official needs to the court and district head office, those in needs of health care and medical advice, among others.

These buses are owned and operated by private transport companies, dominated by a handful companies that control the ownership of most of them. It is interesting to note that the ownership of these transport companies was controlled among the social and political elite of the region i.e. among Bhumihars and Brahmins with a modest entry made by the Yadavs in the past decade.