Stories from Manesar, Kadapa and elsewhere

Aman Sethi’s essay in today’s Hindu aptly titled “Gone in 50 seconds” goes on to describe how the speeding up of its assembly line at Manesar brought Maruti to a screeching halt. A fifty second assembly line translates into the plant rolling out 1152 cars every day over two shifts of eight hours each. I found the starting paragraph particularly fascinating where he says “On most days in this industrial suburb of Delhi, a phalanx of robotic arms weld sheets of pressed steel into silvery monocoque body shells that emerge from the paint shop in shades of arctic pearl white, glistening grey, blazing red and midnight black.” The sum and substance of the essay is captured in one particular paragraph where he writes “For a worker, line acceleration can be a harrowing experience. When I first began working for Maruti, assembly lines used to run right through my dreams, said a worker with a laugh and continued that, these days I suppose I am so tired that I don’t get dreams anymore.”

A few days earlier, I was standing on the terrace of a 15 storeyed high rise apartment with Azhar and Saddam. They were construction workers employed with the Delhi-based contractor firm which was to build the planned massive residential project comprising of five imposing towers of which only one had been completed and occupied so far. From atop the terrace of this sole completed tower you could see the landscape all around – a landscape dotted with half-finished buildings, tall cranes, massive earth movers and scores of workers with yellow coloured helmets sitting pretty on their still heads as they went about cementing the foundation of a neighbouring tower. A little further away you could see a few abandoned semi-constructed buildings, a famished water body and a colony of tin sheds clustered together in no particular pattern. Azhar was in his late 20s while Saddam was much younger. Both were from Kishanganj in Bihar. When I walked into the terrace, I found Azhar standing alone, leaning lightly against the parapet and looking down peacefully from the vantage point that he was in. After I had viewed the landscape all around and spent a few quiet moments looking into the skyline of a city transforming itself into now familiar shapes and colours of concrete towers, I felt the urge to strike a conversation with my quiet companion and contemporary. Azhar dropped his reticence at the first opportunity and showed much interest in the ensuing conversation. He told me that he was in this line of work since the last ten years and that he had stayed and worked in Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore in all these years. He promptly counted five localities in Bangalore where he had stayed and worked in the last eleven months. He did painting work for which he was paid Rs. 300 for every eight hours of work in a day. Besides, he was also getting overtime wages at the same rate for every additional 8 hours of work. He said that he and his colleagues ended up working 12-16 hours every day and added that they did not mind it because there wasn’t any other “time-pass” for them at that place anyway. I think he smiled when he said that his work is his “time-pass.”

By this time a boyish looking Saddam joined him and it was then that they told me that they are both from Kishanganj. How often do they go home? They said that they do get to go back to their home for 15-20 days after every six to eight months but I noticed that they said it without much enthusiasm in their voice or demeanour, which is what I had expected when I had asked them about their native place. How was living in the city like? Not bad, Azhar said. Then with a slight hesitation in his voice he added “except that I have to live in a jhuggi.” And then he pointed out to that colony of tin sheds and said “that’s where we live.” Each tin shed shared by 3-4 persons. Every morning he and his colleagues are at the worksite by eight. But before they arrive for their duties, they cook their meals for the rest of the day (each house mate does it by turns) and carry the same to their work site. By the time they return to their tin shed most of the lights in the only completed tower would have gone off. And they have little unspent energy to brood upon such trivialities like having to live in a jhuggi. Today morning when I read about the worker in the Maruti factory who would return home so tired that he didn’t get dreams anymore, my mind scampered off to a distant terrace of a fifteen storeyed tower.

In the beginning of this week, I met Muneer on an autorickshaw. He was driving it. Muneer happened to forget taking a critical turn (critical considering the number of one-ways in Bangalore) en route to my destination. Both of us realised it soon after but by then it was too late for a course correction. So we made light of it and Muneer explained how he went ahead in one particular direction because every day he happened to ferry his passengers in that direction. On a route clogged with vehicles it is indeed sometimes difficult to distinguish one road from the other or one traffic signal from the next. They all look alike – restless, distraught and noisy. Muneer went on to describe how the city has transformed itself over the years and how lives have changed. He explained how he and his entire family could have a full meal for ten rupees not long back, and now you do not even get a packet of milk for that much. He said he earns an average of Rs. 500 every day after working for nearly 12 hours in a day and ends up spending Rs. 400 out of it, despite his devout way of life. He went on to describe in his own colourful style as to how the city had been ruined because of the influx of Biharis. (this after he had confirmed that I was a native of Bengal and he had said a few good words about Bengalis in general) Why Biharis, I asked? Because the locals here got hooked on to Manikchand (gutka) after they were introduced to it by the Biharis. The Biharis have swarmed the city, he said. All the construction workers are Biharis. I asked him why. He said because if a local is even spoken roughly to he will not turn up for work the next day, whereas the Biharis – even if they are shouted at, abused and made to over work – they refuse to leave. His generalisations apart, I felt that Muneer’s surmises about how the job market right at the bottom of the pyramid functions was not very far from reality. I am grateful that he told all of this to me in a very jocular vein and not with the sense of despondency that it deserves.

As deftly as Muneer had explained the decline of purchasing power of rupee, Raju who works as a driver at my office explained the logic behind migration from rural countryside into urban jungles such as Bangalore. In his village in Kadapa district in Andhra Pradesh, if one has an acre of land and he sows groundnut he will extract a maximum of 1000 kilograms of groundnut. This he has to sell at Rs. 600 per quintal which translates into a meagre income of Rs. 6000. He did not forget to underline the irony that the groundnut which the farmer in Kadapa sells at Rs. 6 per kg is bought from hawkers in Bangalore for Rs. 5 for 50 grams. He went on to explain that agriculture in his village and in so many other regions of Rayalseema is not irrigation-driven and is therefore wholly dependant on the rains which must not only be sufficient but should also come at the right times during the crop cycle. Five years ago the farmers went on to install borewells to draw water from the underlying water table but in no time the borewells fell into disuse because the water table beneath did not have much to offer. Does it not make sense then, he asks, to desert the villages and come to cities looking for work? Any kind of work in any kind of conditions. Would they then bother about such trivialities like having to live in a jhuggi, I wonder.

Meanwhile, when it gets very hot in the afternoons or very dusty and noisy at the traffic signals, I pull up the tinted windows of my car, switch on the air-conditioner and play some soft music. And I try hard to forget that there is a world outside my car of which I am a part and which is a part of me....