Driving down the sigh-way

The Wadala Truck Terminal is a 288acre hangout for longhaul truck drivers travelling to and from the city We see a group of them sitting around swapping stories inside jokes and highfives relief written all over their faces And for good reasonOn January 1 it was announced that under the new Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita all motorists found guilty in hitandrun accidents will be jailed for 10 years and made to pay a penalty of Rs 7 lakh After a threeday long strike that crippled the city they relented on Wednesday when the government announced that it would defer the laws implementationJaved Khan 33 comes from Farrukhabad a small city that sits on the banks of the Ganga 300 km away from the national capital Khan has 10 years of experience as a truck driver and is the most talkative among his group of peers ldquoItrsquos good and bad I guess it depends on your nazariyardquo he says about his life on the road Every eight hours Khan and his coworkers gather around their trucksmdashthe driversrsquo equivalent of gathering around the water cooler in the office to trade work gossip ldquoI drive for eight hours stop at a dhaba to eat while chatting with my friends for half an hour and jump back behind the steering wheel again We do eighthour stretches till we get to the terminusrdquo he saysBal Malkit Singh Gyan Sharma Prof Amarpreet Singh Guhra and Javed Khan PicsSatej ShindeKhan like many of his friends in this line of work seems well rested after the twoday break from the road while truckers across the country were on strike on January 1 and 2 It was their definition of an extended weekend a luxury in their profession Khan and the other drivers we meet ferry goods such as medicines perishables and ecommerce deliveries They and their associates in the transport industry insist that the strike was not without reasonldquoHow can I send a driver out on the road when the stakes are as high as a 10year imprisonment and a fine as crippling as R7 lakh This in a scenario when if an accident occurs a truck driver has to contend with a mob that only sees redrdquo asks veteran union leader Bal Malkit Singh chairman of the All India Transportersrsquo AssociationThe fourthgeneration transporter is simultaneously fielding phone calls from his logistic managers who are eager to get the idle trucks back on the roadsldquoThere is a lot of backlog of maalrdquo he explains ldquoWe are still figuring it all outrdquoWhile to most of the country the trucking communityrsquos reaction seemed to be indicative of a guilty conscience industry insiders beg to differ This includes people like Sanjay Sasane who retired as Regional Transport Officer from Mumbai and has worked closely with truck drivers for over two decades Sasane views this as only the latest in a series of unfortunate events for the drivers who have been struggling for years without a proper framework for their professionldquoWhen the licenses for operating heavy vehicles are issuedrdquo says Sasane ldquothe qualifying exams while thorough on paper are far from it on the ground The truck drivers donrsquot have benefits like performancebased appraisals or health insurance Not only that the monthly salary system too was discontinued in 2018 Now the drivers get paid on a pertrip basis As a result the bettereducated and those who take initiative move ahead in life giving up the profession at some point while the others stay in the same line of workrdquoIn 2019 the central government also removed the minimum education requirement of Class 8 for truck drivers The consequences were more serious than what the government may have imaginedldquoDuring my tenure with the RTO when this requirement was still in place we found that most accidents involved drivers who had only studied up to Class 8 Those who had finished even one more year of secondary education were responsible for fewer accidents as the latter could read signages and were better socialised as they spent more time with their peersrdquo he saysProf Amarpreet Singh Ghura postdoctoral research fellow at IIM Calcutta and an alumnus of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences has further insight to share Ghurarsquos family is in the transport business and after he witnessed endemic issues around the hiring of drivers he tried to find a solution for itldquoBack in 201516 we observed that many drivers would sell off the goods they were ferrying or get involved in crimes ranging from petty to serious We would only find out after they were gone that they already had past criminal records We wanted to create a system where this information would be available to recruiters before the drivers were hiredrdquo Ghura recountsAs an attempted solution Ghura and Singh started a website called drivers420com in 2015 which they operated for three years till Ghura enrolled at IIM CalcuttaldquoWe found a lot of hesitation within the transport community to give us details about FIRs filed against their former employees They were even unwilling to register FIRs against drivers who had committed crimes while working with them as they found the effort too tediousrdquo he tells middayFurther he adds the transport community wasnrsquot exactly welcoming of their suggestion of providing benefits as basic as insurance The reason given was that since the drivers go back to their native villages during harvest season or for weddings during summer it wasnrsquot practical to invest in drivers who lsquowerenrsquot loyalrsquoldquoBut loyaltyrdquo says Ghura who hopes to revive his website soon ldquohas never existed among drivers simply because it has never been encouragedrdquoBesides adds Sasane truck drivers havenrsquot had reason to take pride in their work eitherldquoTheir work too is looked down upon despite the fact that these are the men who ferry essential commodities all over the country As a result the lack of pride leads to a lack of accountability among the driversrdquo he saysStill for many of the drivers like Gyan Sharma 33 this line of work is their only hope for sustenanceSharma is a native of Balrampur city in Uttar Pradhesh a pilgrimage town for Buddhists and Jains He explains that his city depends greatly on tourism and agriculture the Rs 15000 to Rs 20000 that he strives hard to send home every month is very important for his parents two brothers and one sister who are dependent on himldquoIn a good month if I stick to my employerrsquos deadlines and if I donrsquot get fined or donrsquot have to pay hefty bribes I can save up to R25000 to send home These are the months that the Gods smile down on me and my familyrdquo says SharmaHe adds that he is trying to cut down on his spending even further by cooking his own meals ldquoI am exhausted by the time I get home but by now I can make a mean anda fry fried egg that goes very well with pavrdquo the 13year trucking veteran tells us proudly