Truck de India!

by Rajat Ubhaykar

  It’s probably the bhukki, but I wonder if much of ‘unskilled’ India—like Jora—earns whatever little it does by being resourceful in small ways, which salaried folks then patronize as jugaad or contemptuously term corruption. Morality, after all, is a luxury when one struggles to meet basic needs. It is a construct created by the powerful to hold the powerless in check.

  Newspapers, which are supposed to highlight this disparity, largely focus on the ‘formal economy’ where human well-being is reduced to GDP per capita and HDI. But much of India, that toils in the informal sector, how they survive, strive to thrive, their silent reserves of endurance, their inexplicable optimism, Jora’s calloused hands—this is never talked about. The vertiginous gap between the rich and poor; the stark difference between their lived realities, as if they’re members of two different species; this is never mentioned.

  Maybe it’s because India has always been this way— an insular ruling elite cooped up in their citadels or ‘gated colonies’, sucking away the rest of the country’s wealth like a giant suction pump. At least, that’s what the history books say, except they couch it in clinical academic terms like feudalism or ‘centralization of rural surplus’. It’s likely that India would evoke the same conflicted feelings of repulsion and awe if I were to travel back in time. In fact, the disparity was so obvious to many ancient and medieval travelers from China, Europe and West Asia that they couldn’t restrain themselves from remarking on the destitution of the common man and the unbridled opulence of the nobles. Indeed, if a genuinely subaltern history of India were ever to be written, it would probably upend our self-conception of the nation, because while we like to harp about the fact that India used to be a sone ki chidiya (a golden bird), how all that gold came to be hoarded is never questioned. Even today, the popular narrative around India centres on its rising superpower status. Its allure on the global stage is almost gravitational, subtly influencing the rest of the world through its sheer weight. But traveling through it, India essentially seems the same. Unchanged. Yes, the mud huts have given way to ugly bricked towns. But if we talk about the lives of its people, how much have they changed?

  Both Jora and Jagdev are aware of the crucial role that truck drivers play in the nation’s economy. Jagdev says, ‘They say drivers are responsible for the economy. If they display some ekta (unity) and go on a hartal (strike), the prices of essential commodities would shoot up and the country would come to a standstill. But there’s no unity and that’s the problem.’

  Divided as the drivers are along lines of ownership, territory, caste, religion and language, no single organization has been able to mobilize all the truck drivers of India. The Greeks, for instance, had succeeded in 2010.

  Maybe this lack of unity among the working class is why trade unions failed in India. Because the workers serve different small masters, there is no Big Boss for them to rise against. The stagnancy of industrial capitalism ensured that large factories never really took off in India. Instead, we have the Medium, Small, Micro Enterprises—the MSME sector—many of them one room enterprises whose entire existence is predicated on evading the immense regulatory maze they otherwise have to navigate. As Irfan Habib and Tapan Raychaudhuri argue in The Cambridge Economic History of India: Volume 1:

  The small men, because they were small, investing little and profiting less, could never be driven out of business, and the power of the great was circumscribed by the ubiquity of the small. A major reason why Abdul Ghafur, Gujarat’s greatest merchant and shipowner at the close of the 17th century, was unable to establish a monopoly in his favoured Red Sea trade was that he was unable to cope with the multitude of small traders, many of whom he managed to drive into bankruptcy.

  This fragmented nature of business, even today, creates a system where there are many bosses and even more workers, and the bosses are not even that big. They’re just a little better off than the workers. It’s the same reason why land reforms failed in India. Most farmers already are small and marginal peasants, where is the land to distribute to the landless, hope to the hopeless?

  Aided by intermittent doses of bhukki and Four Squares, Jora goes on driving, with Jagdev taking over the wheel for a couple of hours in between. Around two in the night, Jora catches himself dozing at the wheel, and parks the truck at the first place the narrow road allows him. It’s time to sleep, which means attempting to twist our bodies in the limited space of the cabin, ‘adjusting’ in that classic Indian fashion.

  The next morning, I’m awoken by the zealous twittering of birds. It’s seven o’clock. In spite of my cramped position, I’ve enjoyed a surprisingly fitful sleep. Jora and Jagdev haven’t woken up yet. I strain myself, sit up, and behold that yesterday’s sepia landscape has given way to a sea of green all around me. A tender sun is caressing my arm. I jump out of the truck, only to be hit by a blast of fresh air, the whiff of standing crops and fresh cow dung wafting in with the gentle breeze. Ah, Haryana! It is for moments like these one travels, when in the morning light, the unknown brushes off its veil, and all one can do is stand there, in a state of delightful disorientation.

  Jora wakes up after some time, wears his shoes, jumps off the truck, and immediately starts brushing his teeth. He then switches on Gurbani—melodious hymns composed by the Sikh Gurus—humming along with them at the wheel. This glorious morning, the village stirring up to its daily duties, these soothing musical notes massaging my soul, I feel at peace. Truly, the moment the first strains of Gurbani hit the ears, even a stranger becomes a little Sikh.

  It’s soon time to get going. Jora folds his hands in prayer to the steering wheel, before plugging in the truck key. The Gurbani is overwhelmed by the rumble of the truck’s engine, evidently reinvigorated after a good night’s rest. Jora switches off the sacred music as a mark of respect.

  We are finally off, and I’m thankful I can finally see where we’re headed. I see a sleepy little town ready to go through the motions of yet another eventless day. Kirana owners are setting up shop. Naked brick buildings stare me down. I write in my diary that the structures look as if they could well have belonged to the Harappan era, right down to the colour of the brick. Haryana, after all, is home to some of the biggest Harappan sites there are, Rakhigarhi being the most prominent among them.

  It is difficult to believe this is the same land where proto-Haryanvis were once laying down neatly arranged grids of streets, and engineering sophisticated drainage systems. I wonder where all that knowledge of urban planning has vanished. Most settlements I see are a filthy mess, occupied by piles of burning garbage, slime-covered water bodies that have long been smothered by algae, and towering mounds of dung patties. The only respite from this grim monotony are the numerous small temples dedicated to Shiva and Krishna. They’re the only buildings that have a coat of paint on them.

  However, what’s most jarring is that manual labour in the villages we pass seems to be the exclusive preserve of women. They’re everywhere—toiling in the fields, whipping bullocks laden with bales of hay, pounding cow-dung patties with their bare hands, balancing vessels brimming with water on their heads. And the men? Most of them are either playing cards under the shade of a tree, or lounging on khats by the very side of the road, their sole companion a smouldering hukka.

  The most disturbing part, however, is seeing the women straining to ensure their dupatta covers their face, even as they’re exerting themselves in the sun, latching on to it with the edges of their teeth, their sweating faces fixed in a lopsided grimace. It feels like I’ve stepped into a dystopian world, but the dystopia is real, these veiled labouring women are real. Haryana must be one of the best places on earth to be born as a man. All you have to do is exist, and you’ll be lauded for it.

  ‘What do you think of Haryana?’ I ask Jora.

  He doesn’t mince his words.

  ‘Bandar-jaat—Nincompoops (literally monkey-caste).’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Tameez nahi hoti (They don’t
have manners). And do you know that they even let their seven-year-olds smoke bidi?’

  ‘Is that so now?’ I ask him disbelievingly.

  ‘Yes. You probably don’t know this but it’s the badmaash Haryanvis and Rajasthanis who’ve brought disrepute to the truck driver community. Punjabis like us were the original truck drivers who’ve been driving since the beginning. Since even before independence.’

  He says they’re among the few drivers brave enough to venture into unfamiliar territories where they can’t speak the language, the ‘asli all-India drivers’ as he puts it. The rest mostly operate in the surrounding two or three states, or on fixed routes. And there might just be some truth in his conceit. Not counting the fact that Gadar, the only major Bollywood blockbuster to feature a truck driver protagonist, was set in Punjab, it’s well-known that many of the small transport companies in post-independence India, especially in the north, were started by displaced Punjabi Khatri refugees from Pakistan, who had no other livelihood to turn to, and so turned to trucking, establishing Punjabi dhabas everywhere while at it.

  But driving down the roads of small town Haryana, I’m struck by the lack of Punjabi dhabas. Most eateries here seem to have appropriated chowmein, burgers and pizzas as an aspirational, upwardly mobile culinary choice. Right from street carts to semi-decent restaurants, chowmein and burgers are the rage here. In fact, this unprecedented shift in culinary tastes in conservative Haryana has evidently been alarming enough for one khap panchayat to blame chowmein consumption for rising cases of rape!

  Or maybe, they don’t bother to advertise the aloo paratha, which we wolf down at a dhaba run by a Sikh known to Jora. This seems to be his regular stop because he also proceeds to take a bath. Jagdev opts out. Considering that I haven’t had the chance to brush my teeth yet, I’m impressed by Jora’s emphasis on cleanliness.

  ‘One who calls himself a Sikh of the True Guru shall get up early morning and meditate on the Lord’s Name. Make effort regularly to cleanse, bathe and dip in the ambrosial pool. Upon Guru’s instructions, chant Har, Har singing which, all misdeeds, sins and pains shall go away,’ advises Guru Ram Das in the Guru Granth Sahib. Habit, cleanliness, honour and religiosity—Jora truly embodies these quintessentially Punjabi qualities.

  Making our way through small towns like Jind and Kaithal, we soon cross the cantonment town of Ambala. We’re back on the national highway now. It is late afternoon, just edging towards evening. The sun is right in our eyes. The road is well-paved and we’re approaching a speed of sixty kilometres an hour, a positively supersonic number for an overloaded truck like ours. (The average truck covers twenty kilometres an hour on long distance trips.) Chandigarh is hardly fifty kilometres away and I’m already visualizing a quiet night of repose, preferably after some Punjabi-style whisky.

  A grey Tata Indica, containing a family of five, ventures to cross the road a little ahead of us. Jora starts honking frantically. I’m alarmed when I realize he’s attempting to alert the car driver to the fact that he won’t be able to arrest the unmanageable momentum of his overloaded truck in time. And boy, is it overloaded. It has, at this point, the force of a battering ram, loaded as it is with over fifty tons of Kota stone, more than double its mandated capacity of twenty-one tons.

  I’m frozen with anticipation. The scene plays out in slow motion—the Indica driver hesitates for a moment, then dismisses Jora’s honking, probably as old school vehicular opportunism, and makes the deadly call of plodding on to cross the road. Jora’s motivational muttering turns a pitch higher, now coloured by a deep shade of panic.

  Just as I’m bracing for a deafening collision, feeling strangely calm, the kind of calm that descends upon a man who’s about to meet his maker, Jora turns the steering wheel at the last minute, managing to squeeze the truck between the Indica and a bicycle tottering on the edge of the road. Phew!

  ‘Bhenchod,’ Jora sighs. ‘Phir log bolte hain truck driver peekar chalate hain (And then they say the truck driver was drunk at the wheel).’ His shoulders, which had tightened in a posture of concentrated alertness, now visibly relax. He lights another Four Square.

  Reeling from this near-death encounter, I realize that if there’s one life lesson I’ve learnt from this experience, it is this—do not, under any circumstances, willfully ignore a honking truck driver. It’s very likely he’s driving an overloaded truck, which means that even if he wants to stop the truck, he simply won’t be able to, considering overloading reduces braking efficiency by as much as 40 per cent.

  Also, the world looks very different from the cabin of a truck. It is assumed that the high vantage point offers a clear view of the surroundings. But the fact is that the design of the truck has huge blind spots. The bigger the truck, the more numerous the blind spots— right in front, at the back, on the sides (especially the left side in India). An important part of the khalassi’s job is to keep an eye on the left side of the vehicle, and guide the driver through tricky stretches. But with the growing shortage of truckers in India, single drivers have become increasingly common, in spite of a government regulation that mandates double drivers.

  I resolve to treat these growling beasts respectfully, which is unfortunately not the case in much of India. In the motorized jungles that are Indian roads, trucks ideally should have been regarded like elephants— respectfully, and from a distance. But here, the smaller beasts harass them with an impunity that belies their size, much like the proverbial ants, their occupants showing scant respect and even outright contempt for the drivers, on account of the status differential being what it is. Nonetheless, Jora displays a sort of magnanimous humour towards the smaller vehicles, calmly giving way to the raucous ones itching to overtake him. He almost seems to regard them indulgently. ‘Aithe othe jaande hain saala pata hi nahi chalda hai (You can’t even tell when the cars have swung past you from your right and your left),’ he gesticulates, like a stand-up comedian trying too hard.

  Jora is oblivious to the fact that overloading has been explicitly outlawed by the Supreme Court in 2005. All he knows is that he has to ‘adjust’ his driving according to the load. In fact, driving down the highways of India with truckers, I’m hardly able to guess that such a ban is in operation. Clearly, the law of the land is very different from what the Hon’ble Supreme Court deems it to be.

  The problem, sometimes, is with the law itself. They are so numerous and contradictory—the vestiges of India’s statist economic past—that they simply take on the nature of an impediment whose unrealistic standards are the natural guarantors of their ineffectiveness; a self-defeating, or rather self-enriching exercise.

  For instance, the Motor Vehicles Act completely prohibits overloading, i.e., exceeding the truck’s gross vehicle weight. But states found a way to bypass this niggling roadblock. They started issuing ‘gold cards’, a bit of bureaucratic alchemy that magically made the illegal legal, by allowing transporters to overload vehicles after paying a progressive penalty. It didn’t take long for this practice to be appealed before the Supreme Court which then explicitly prohibited overloading under any conditions in 2005.

  Unfortunately, as things stand, Supreme Court orders, especially those related to the state governments, are blatantly flouted. The states know the Supreme Court has more pressing matters on hand than pulling up each one of them for non-implementation. Neither does the court possess the enforcement machinery to ensure implementation.

  The most glaring example is police reforms. The Supreme Court in 2006 gave a binding seven-point agenda of reform to the states. But even a decade after the ruling, hardly any of them have been executed. Everybody’s wise to the deep-seated corruption in the police system, but it is so entwined with the states’ political economy that there is no institutional will to bring about a change. Overloading is another such law.

  It is one of the cardinal pillars on which the entire transportation industry rests. None of the key protagonists in this illicit drama—the RTO officials, the transporters and
the consignors—want it to go.

  The RTOs, which charge hefty amounts to allow the passage of overloaded vehicles, certainly want it to stay. After all, it is one of the prime reasons why RTOs are known to be one of the most lucrative departments in the entire government apparatus. The truckers at the Transport Nagar in Udaipur had been bursting with stories about income tax raids unearthing untold wealth under the sofas and bathroom tiles of transport department employees—even supposedly lowly clerks and peons. For instance, one peon in Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, managed to amass wealth worth Rs 100 crore, by calling the shots on which files were to be forwarded to senior officials. In fact, his position as a peon was so lucrative that he turned down repeated offers of promotion which would have interfered with his well-oiled network of patronage and influence.

  ‘You should come to the MP–Rajasthan border to video record how they collect money in gunny bags,’ the truckers in Udaipur had implored me. They had rushed to retrieve coded alphabetical receipts from their shirt and trouser pockets and had laid them on the table for me to see. ‘A Q here,’ they had pointed, ‘means a payment of Rs 5,000 has been made, while an SS means Rs 3,500 paid. This is given to truckers depending on the carrying capacity of the truck.’ I was stunned by how organized the enterprise was, almost as if corruption had been elevated to an art form by transport officials.

  The officials had also divided territory among themselves. ‘The border officials insist on monthly haftas from us and that hafta receipt is recognised only at that particular border post. If you want to enter Madhya Pradesh via another border check-post, it will require a separate receipt, thus forcing us to take a longer route and go through the same border.’