A rickshaw is a tri-cycle; it glides smooth on the metal road, five minutes to travel a kilometre. A rickshaw is sweat dripping down the body in a hot summer day; a rickshaw is jingling of bells ringing incessantly in my head all night. A rickshaw is traffic jam blocking everything. A rickshaw puller doesn’t care for traffic rules, he wants to cross the road; he wants to reach a destination and rest and light a cigarette, drink a glass of water.

A rickshaw is a number, never alone; a rickshaw does not pollute the environment, as one board (rickshaw painting) at the back of a rickshaw announces, “I am fee from pollution”. Rickshaws rest together taking the walking path away from the pedestrians, front wheels hugging each other; they wait for the morning like silent sparrows on the porch. A rickshaw is a colour show, mobile, and a show –off.

A rickshaw is alive, possess a metal soul, head cover, arms and mudguards and wheels of life; it has a footrest; it swallows lubricants into its bowels. A rickshaw can be pushed through the water logged streets while the motorcars cough and die out and.

A rickshaw is a champion of the road and not the rickshaw pullers. A new rickshaw costs 15,000 taka and a week to be assembled. A rickshaw can be hooded wife of the road. A rickshaw jolts on a road dug, uneven, protests with a language understood only by a puller.

There are more than 100,000 rickshaws operate in Dhaka, a city known for these tri-cycles. One needed a license from the municipality, a number plate that would cost 5000 Takas in the past. “Most of the money would be pocketed by the greedy officials. A total of 79,616 rickshaw numbers were issues till from the Dhaka City Corporation until 1990. No new numbers were given from the time of President Ershad. Though he issued 8000 new numbers the next government in power, cancelled the registration. The preset government does not want any more new rickshaws on the road rather, they confiscates rickshaws from time to time.”

A rickshaw looks after 6 families: the owner of the rickshaw, the mechanics doing the repairing jobs, a manger keeps track of the rickshaw pullers working in two shifts – morning to afternoon and afternoon to mid night; rickshaw pullers, and the factory workers. In Bangladesh there are factories making accessories like the hood of a rickshaw, the seat and the carpenters who fit and furnish a hood and a seat, the painting artists; chassis and tyre-tube is also manufactured here. Only ball-bearings are imported mostly from China and India.    

In Sylhet, you have to call a rickshaw puller, “O driver” and he will respond. Once you are mistaken and call, “Oiy Rickshaw” like in other towns, he will ignore you. How can a rickshaw puller be a rickshaw? He is not a transport, or a cow, or a dog? He has dignity which people often forget in this country.”

A rickshaw is usually is a means of livelihood of 8 rickshaw pullers. One person doesn’t run it everyday, takes a break every alternate day as it is a ‘thankless job’, hard and ‘blood sucking, one needs to rest’.

“A rickshaw puller runs home to his family when the saving exceeds a thousand Taka. The money eared by a rickshaw puller goes to the country side. They are migrant labourers moving in and out of Dhaka every 15 days to 2 months. The rickshaw pullers from the northern districts wait to save 3,000 taka for it is along journey back home’.
(1 US Dollar = about 70 Taka)

It is estimated that more than half of the rickshaws find their home on the streets called garages. The maintenance cost of a single rickshaw for an owner is around 40 Taka of which 3.5 Taka is for the police on duty (called garage cost). The other expenses include manpower, daily maintenance/accessories, investment return and monthly fee for the owner’s association. To make a profit, one owner should have a minimum of 15 rickshaws.

To make a new rickshaw, ‘a hi-fi one’, it will take 15,000 taka. To ‘buy’ an original number (that is from the 79,616 serial), one needs to pay another 15,000 Taka. The registration cost for a rickshaw is still 310 taka. In this country, like every government office, the speed money/entertainment cost is may fold than it should be.

Apart from these 79,616 numbers, there are other organisations run by political connections, “who have made new numbers managing all concerned offices.” Few known ones in Dhaka are: Muktijoddha Sangshad (25,000), Insur Ali (39,000), Mahtab (4,000), BNP (20,000). These are all estimates for no one will give the exact numbers as ‘these are not legal’. On top of that, for every legal and political numbers, they made another 3 (at least) duplicates; one rickshaw of each number will ploy in Tejgaon area, another in Mipur and the one in the old town of Dhaka.

To sum up an estimated number of richshaws in the capital city can be around 500,000. And thus I call Dhaka is the City of Rickshaws and Rickshaw pullers.