The Cycle Rickshaw

Saket (aka Vulturo), who writes and excellent blog, tells of his experience with old-fashioned cycle rickshaws in Delhi:

I did not quite like the Cycle-Rickshaw idea when I came across it, for I believe it is a bit inhuman to use human beings in the role of “Beasts Of Burden”. But the DTC Buses which run here are worthless, and finally everyone has to fall back on cycle-richshaws. However, for the first two days, on moral grounds, I stoutly refused to use a cycle-rickshaw to go anywhere and used my own two feet instead. On the third day, a cycle rickshaw driver explained the logic to me “Agar aap nahi baithenge to hum paise kaise kamaenge” and then I somehow reconciled myself. Still, one person per rickshaw is somewhat acceptable, I think - but I sometimes I see even two or three people in them with the rickshaw puller huffing and panting like a dog while pulling his quarry. What is apalling is people even haggle with the poor rickshaw puller, just to save two to three rupees.

Charu, who writes an excellent blog, writes of her similar experience with cycle rickshaws in Jalandhar:

Jalandhar is a small town in many ways - nice friendly people who want to know everyting about you and invite you home for garam khaana (hot food) right after the first meeting…

And small enough for people to commute by cycle rickshaw… Five rupees can take you a long way in this city. And people bargaining with the rickshaw puller - paanch rupaiye kyon? paas hi to jaana hai - teen rupaiye le lo (why five rupees for such a short distance - take three rupees)

I guiltily think about how little five rupees means to me. I wave away the rickshaws who stop near me and start walking…

What is worse - to ride on one of them, with another human being pulling you? or walking away and depriving him of this opportunity to earn his living? I never know…

I have taken a few rides on a cycle rickshaw, but not in India. They are a sort of tourist novelty in Victoria, Canada (a beautiful city – Sunil you and your wife must take the ferry over there). I did not feel any bad feeling about being pulled by another human being because these guys are college students and they are just trying to make a little summer money. They weren’t desperate. But if they were disparate, wouldn’t that mean I had a duty to help them?

The reason we might feel bad about the cycle rickshaw is because it is a holdover from a previous time when economic opportunities were scarce and some people went to this occupation out of desperation. We feel intuitively that a fair society would not cause people to do this. It might be similar to the way we might view prostitution or bar dancing. We think that this should not be happening, and we should not help make it happen. Of course, the analogy to prostitution is extreme: both the rickshaw driver and the prostitute offer their bodies, but the similarity ends there.

However, people should be free to do as they please, and if a man wants to pull a cycle rickshaw, that might be the best employment opportunity he can currently find. We cannot help him by simple refusing his services. Of course, we should be free to refuse his services if we really prefer to walk. But there is no reason to deny him a living simply out of a sense that his job shouldn’t exist.

Instead of thinking that the cycle rickshaw represents the dark side of the free market, we should see it as the dark side of socialism. In a free market, cycle rickshaws only exist as a tourist novelty. In socialism, it is a way of life for a segment of society that was denied other employment opportunities.