EVERY DAY AT THE CRACK OF dawn, streaming out into the streets of Dhaka, are thousands of crude mechanical contraptions wobbling downtown like a decrepit armada going to war. Within the next few hours, the main streets and choked alleys of the Bangladesh capital become a battlefield as the army of cycle-rickshaws pits itself against Toyotas and taxis, auto-rickshaws and tempos. It is a war of transportation which the rickshaws win every day: transporting over 70 lakh passengers, in other words, 70 per cent of Dhaka's commuters.
With over three lakh cycle-rickshaws plying its streets every day (Bangladesh has over 7.5 lakh), Dhaka is easily the rickshaw capital of the world. Ever since the first rickshaw was imported from Calcutta in the early '30s, they have become the first choice of the middle class commuters in a country where motorised public transport facilities are fickle and costly.
They might be a nuisance to urban and transportation planners but cycle-rickshaws have cut out a niche for themselves in the national economy. A survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics seven years ago revealed that in 1985-86, rickshaws contributed 34 per cent of the transport sector earnings in the country. This was more than double the contribution of all motorised road transport and twice the contribution of the national airline, Bangladesh Biman. Moreover, the cycle-rickshaws provide jobs to nearly 20 lakh people. "We are going to cycle on forever in greater numbers, never mind the fact that Dhaka is a city of the babus,'' says Khaled Mian, who's been pedalling cycle-rickshaws for the past 15 years in Dhaka.
Not everybody in the city echoes Khaled Mian's sentiments. Trapped in peak-hour traffic in Dhaka, which is always a nightmare, the anger of other drivers rises to a point of explosion when they see dawdling rickshaws crawling along like snails and clogging every inch of the city's roads. A recent government committee report to solve Dhaka's traffic problems commented: "The combination of fast moving and slow moving vehicles leads to accidents in Dhaka.
The predominance of rickshaws leads to traffic jams. They are a major problem."
No wonder, considering the fact that government laws limiting the number of rickshaw licenses issued every year are flouted openly in a flourishing fake licences market. As a result, half of the rickshaws plying in Dhaka are unregistered and their growth goes unchecked. While another recent government report contemplates a crackdown on the rickshaw trade, it eventually concludes that "it's not possible to stop rickshaws in the city. Their numbers can only be decreased in a phased manner". But nobody knows how this can be done.
And the rickshaw-puller is determined to carry on with his trade. Rafiq Khan, who pedals a rickshaw in the capital, says: "If the Government tries to stop us, we'll bring the city to a standstill." The reason Khan and his ilk can afford to take on the Government is the support they will receive from, for example, the lower middle and middle classes, for whom rickshaws in Dhaka provide the cheapest form of transport compared to the auto-rickshaws and tempos that ply the city's roads. Also, during the monsoon which invariably floods Dhaka, rickshaws are the only mode of transport available to carry marooned people to their destinations safely and without stalling or creating other problems.
Although the authorities are debating how to prevent Dhaka from becoming the ultimate motorists' nightmare, the cycle-rickshaws are pedalling merrily and seem set to keep carrying millions of people into the 21st century.