[Reader-list] Job Oppurtunities for LLPs. Post 5.0

[Aman Sethi]

Dear All,
Job oppurtunities for LLPPs is a rather long post - and looks at the
wider matrix of employment around the labour mandi. Mazdoors rarely
sticks to one particular "line", and over a period of time try their
hand, and their luck, at a number of things. Have tried to work in a
slightly tighter "journalistic" style for this post.  Hope u enjoy it.

Best
A.

Part I: Summer

It was that time of the year when everyone began short-listing the
"hottest day of the year." This year the countdown began early when
the 13th of February was declared, some what ambiguously, as the
"hottest day in February in a very long time," by a leading English
publication.  But, that was a mere 28 degrees.  By April 7, Delhi had
recorded "the hottest day of the season" at 39 degrees; by May, the
city was a smoldering 44 degrees (the hottest 8th May in five years) –
two degrees below that white-hot 26th of May 1998: the hottest May in
50 years.

Incandescent winds prowled the main streets of the city, knocking on
windows and battering doors. Like a withering flower, the city slowly
contracted into herself. Her filmy, makeshift outer layers peeled
away; forcing her inhabitants deep into cool, solid, shadowy gullies,
far from the biting heat of day.

In Bara Tuti too, summer had left its mark.  After a winter of
frenetic construction, the summer had brought pareshaani after
pareshaani.  MCD demolitions, sealings, moratoria, had brought
construction activity to a standstill.  The heat had sent many back to
gaon, but still others stayed back in Delhi – marooned on a baking
island, ruing their burnt boats and uncrossed bridges.

The focus of the mandi had slowly shifted to the "palli taraf", or
other side, of the road in an attempt to escape the worst of the
noon-day sun, but some labourers still sat out by the big tyre,
waiting for work.  This was low season for construction anyway.  The
rains were expected in a month or two; and most work would probably
finish before the first showers, but no one really wanted to take a
"chance."

When adding extra rooms to a fourth floor in Delhi, chance can mean
very many things – an MCD official whose asking price is too high, a
mistry who decides to leave for gaon without giving a day's notice, or
a delayed payment that makes further construction financially
impossible.  When "chances" such as these abound, it is best not to
tinker with the roof just before the rains set in.  Work really picked
up in the Id-Diwali period when people fixed their houses, painted
their walls, and invited rishtedaars over for the holidays.  But
Diwali was still some way off.  It was still summer, and the mazdoors
had to find work in a market that seemed to be in a permanent state of
siesta.

Ashraf, Rehaan and Lalloo sat on the stairs of a shuttered kirane ki
dukaan.  Collectively, they were down to their last hundred rupees.
The battered bluish note that had been charged with providing them
with beedis, chai, food and alcohol until they shook themselves up and
walked down to the butcher's shop to paint his blood-smattered walls a
dizzy pink.  The work could wait, and if it didn't, some more would
probably turn up.
For now, there was time to drink a leisurely round of chai, and dream
about other, better ways of making a living, in places far removed
from the sapping heat of summer.



Part II- Scheme a little scheme on me. Job opportunities for LLPPs.

"It is important to remember," said Ashraf, as he pulled on his beedi,
"that the mazdoor is essentially a versatile being.  He is not just a
body, he is also a state of mind;  a sharply focused will that can be
utilized for purposes that go beyond laying one brick on another.  And
in the lean season he must do just that."

However, choosing the right job is a delicate matter.  In the lean
season, any job is the right job, but if you want the RIGHT job – a
little thinking is required.  "Akal lagaoge, toh ek hi din mein mote
ho jaoge."

The most important thing is pay or kamai: how much you earn per hour.
But pay is not just about the sum, it is about how often you are paid
– per day? Per week? Or per month?  The "per month" salary cycle is
the biggest drawback in any regular job. You may get the job, but what
will you eat for the month preceding your first paycheck?  A per week
cycle is good, but a per day system is the best.  Anything longer
simply holds you hostage until the payday – and every further delay
makes it harder and harder to leave.

The pay cycle is intrinsically linked to your freedom, and this is the
beauty of dehadi ka kaam (daily wage work).  You settle at price,
finish the work, take the money and leave.  If he pays you the agreed
price, great.  If he doesn't, no-one at the mandi works for him again.

The right job then, is the perfect balance of pay and freedom.  A job
that allows you the luxury of not going, but also the comfort of
assured pay if you do go.  A job that requires no qualifications other
than the universal LLPP degree.

"An LLPP,"  said Ashraf, to an increasingly awe-struck Rehaan, "is a
qualification that we are all borne with, and may be claimed by even
the most stubborn illiterates."  So when asked:
"What is your qualification?"
"LLPP."  You may answer with pride.
Chances are the interviewer will never know its expansion:  Likh
Lowda, Padh Patthar.

Such jobs are hard to find. But they exist, and in the unlikeliest of places.
				
*

"The mazdoors are everywhere," says Rehaan, "And that is why we
understand the city and sarkar better than anyone else."    For the
average denizen, the Sarkar is far-away and remote; protected by high
walls topped with jagged glass and gun-toting security men in
ill-fitting uniforms. Access is close to possible only through a
number of small "side entrances" ("Please form a Q") that open out
like hundreds of trapdoors in the boundary walls of a medieval city.

The last time the public really got a view of the Sarkar, was on the
13th of December 2001, when five armed men stormed "the most guarded 5
acre patch in country"- Sansad Bhavan.  The made-for-television drama
that lasted 30 minutes and resulted in 12 deaths, and 12 injuries, and
brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

Rehaan storms Sansad Bhavan on a routine and regular basis – he just
gets an entry pass made at the gate.  "I worked at Sansad Bhavan for
more than a year," he says, "Ek dum thaand ki naukari hai.  All you
have to do is move files from one room to another, carry chairs from
one office to another, and roam around the building as you please."

Contractors recruit mazdoors from chowks across the city, and get
their passes made.  On entry, mazdoors are thoroughly checked by armed
security men, given a standard-issue trolley, and sent off into the
labyrinthine corridors of power.  Once in, the mazdoor is called as
and when he is needed, and in the meantime is free to roam as far as
his access pass lets him.

At least 15 mazdoors work at the Parliament on any given day –
carrying files, moving furniture, installing air-conditioning units
and pushing trolleys. Apart from Rs 250 per day, the job entitles you
to meals, transport to and from the mandi, and various air-conditioned
spaces to dream in.

In sharp contrast to the stated sameness of the outside of Parliament,
the inside seems to be a frenzy of activity.  Several new offices have
been constructed, and an entire universe of files is being shifted
from Parliament to these newer buildings. Rumours abound of buildings
rented for 20 lakhs a month near Khan Market, of newly built
cash-rooms over-flowing with currency, and of course of the luxury in
which the officers conduct their daily business.

According to Rehaan, every bada officer's office has the following
things: an Air conditioner, double bed, sofa set, television,
computer, and two chaparasis who appear at the ring of a bell.  Each
bada officer has about 10 officers under him, and each officer has
several others who report to him.

Files ka kaam touches the nerve centre of sarkariyat.  The file is a
governmental neuro-transmitter: The sarkar sees, hears and acts
through these files.  It is how the Sarkar makes sense of the world
around it. Mountains of files, piles of files, rooms full of files.
So many files, that they are threatening to overrun Sansad Bhavan.  So
many files that the government hires mazdoors everyday to load
thousands of files into trucks bound for Lok Nayak Bhavan.

Apart from acting as the senses of the Sarkar, the file is also the
memory of the Sarkar: A record of every entity that has ever
encountered the state.  A record of every square foot of land bought,
sold, or disputed.  Every suspect, accused and victim.  Every murder,
hanging and encounter.  Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha.

A charged, viral being, the file infects every thing it touches.
Files record those who made them, changed them, issued them, borrowed
them, or signed them.  Every action related to a file is the genesis
of another file, and so the only agent that can really move them,
without getting sucked in, is the mazdoor- unregistered, unidentified,
na baap ka naam, na ghar ka pata.  They live in along different
coordinate axes- intersecting only occasionally, and so mazdoors are
ideal for moving files.

Working in the heart of the Sarkar also makes the outside world easier
to understand.  Every micro-process within the Sansad Bhavan finds
resonance in the outside world, every law starts as a rumour in the
corridors of Sansad Bhavan. Some Bada officer passes on a memo to his
messenger chaparasi, who tells the chaiwallah, who tells a some else,
who tells a mazdoor, who tells the mandi. Occasionally, everyday
occurrences in Sansad Bhavan illustrate just how serious the
government is about a particular scheme, policy or directive.  For
instance, the mandi knew of the scale of the demolitions way before
anyone else.  Rehaan claims that the first giveaway  was when, as a
per Supreme Court directive, the Sarkar demolished about 28 "illegally
constructed" departments in Sansad Bhavan to make way for a pleasure
garden.  Phir toh pukka tha.  Agar Mantralaya mein bhi todh phod mach
gayi, toh Dilli ka kya hoga."

*


Back to the Railway Station.

Crucial as a means to slip into and out of the city at will, the
emergency exit in the heart of the maze, the station also the site of
one of the more taxing, but well paying jobs: "Railway ka kaam."
There plenty of work at the railway station, which is hardly
surprising considering that the Indian Railways is the largest utility
employer in the world with nearly 1.6 million employees looking after
a staggering 5 billion passengers, and 650 million tonnes of freight
every year.  Exams are held, political parties are mobilized, CBI
enquiries are demanded and riots are staged to join this behemoth of a
public utility.   But, these aren't the jobs that Lalloo refers to,
when he speaks of railway ka kaam.  At the mandi, railway ka kaam is
also called "loading ka kaam".

On the face of it, railway ka kaam is 12 hours of back breaking
labour.  The job essentially involves loading packages from trucks
coming from the godown onto out-going trains, and unloading packages
from inbound trains onto the same trucks to take back to the godown.
Fed up with dealing with the vagaries of labour, the railways have now
handed the task over to a private contractor who hires people from the
chowk.

Labour can either choose to work with the contractor on a
semi-permanent basis – in which case they are paid Rs 3500 per month,
with advance payments if required; or can work on a per day basis for
about Rs 250 per day.  However, dehadi jobs are hard to come by and
most labourers opt for semi-permanent jobs.  The work is hard, and the
loads are heavy,  but it's a four-day week and Tuesday and Thursdays
are off. Crucially, two holidays a week allow a mehnati mazdoor to
work on dehadi, and so easily earn an additional Rs 500 per month.
Thus, the complete package comes to about Rs 4000 per month.
Contractors working with the government also tend to get their money
on time, and so usually pay their labourers with comforting
regularity.

The only thing to watch out for in railway ka kaam is that your time
is no longer your own.  The freedom of mazdoori - of working at one's
own pace and time, does not remain.  You are a gulaam to the whims and
fancies of the railway time table.  Trains scream in and out of the
station all day and night, and it is your business to ensure that
loading the bogie doesn't hold up the train. Any delay costs the
contractor a minimum of a thousand rupees, and the chances are that
you'll  end up paying for it.

Many dismiss "railway ka kaam" as sheer mule work.  The money is good,
but not good enough to compensate for the mind-numbing labour, and
finally "Dilli mein koi Lal Qila toh nahin khareedna." The real money,
ironically, is back home in the gaon.

*
Gaon is where the Goat is.

Gaon, where the food is clean, healthy and nutritious, the hand-pump
ka pani is clear, sweet and cold.  Even the air back home is nice.
But, everyone is still here, in this cauldron of a city: eating bad
food, breathing stale air, drinking bad alcohol, and dreaming of the
gaon, and of the mega scheme that will snatch them up from the
footpath and allow them to return home secure in the knowledge "ki
kuch kar, k'ma ke aiye hai."

In fact, a scheme is already in place, and its basic outline is
surprisingly similar to Manmohan Singh's package for Vidarbha.  In one
of his few statements to the press, the Honorable Prime Minister
echoed an observation that Devinder, new arrival at Bara tuti, had
made to much smaller, and yet equally interested, crowd only weeks
before.  The smart money in the village is not on crops, but on
animals, and preferably on a combination of both."

A strapping jat from UP, Devinder negotiates the world of the gaon and
the sheher with equal ease.  One look at his muscles confirms that he
has, in fact, grown up on pure bhains ka doodh.  He spends most of his
time in Chandpur gaon,(first bus-stop after the secondary school),
working on his family's sugar fields, and heads to the city in the
interlude between harvest and sowing to make some money for extra
seeds and fertilizer.  He also possesses a keen business acumen.  In a
clear step-by-step programme, Devinder plots out the ultimate paisa
vasool plan.

As with all plans for market domination, there is the high road and
the low road, dependent on the initial capital.  Each has different
starting points, but ultimately the same destination.

*
You take the High Road if you are a small time sugar farmer with a few
acres of land.  Sugar is to the UP farmer, what coconut is to the
South.  Every step in the process of process of converting sugar-cane
juice to white, crystalline sugar is simple and profitable.  Extract
the juice, and cook if over a fire until thick and syrupy.  Add
"sulphurous" and "choona" to remove the "maail" or residue (this acts
as a bleach and gives the sugar its white color), and then cook it
some more.  Liberally use the pani ki pichakari to sprinkle water to
prevent the syrup from settling, and then pour into a "chakkar", or
revolving mill, while sprinkling water all the time.  After a few
hours, the sugar shall settle down and separate from the seera.  The
seera is then collected and fermented to make alcohol which is sold as
desi sharab.  Suplhurous and Choona are usually used in large-scale
commercial mills and tend to be slightly expensive.  Small scale sugar
production often uses the natural, desi, substitute – the trunk of the
jungali bhindi.

The jungali bhindi grows to about ten feet, and is commonly found all
over UP. Its trunk is used in the sugar purification process.  The
tree is cut, its trunk is pounded into a fine pulp, and soaked
overnight in a tub of water.  The pulp absorbs water and swells to
twice its original volume, after which it is added to the sugar chasni
(syrup) in place of sulphurous or choona (some recipes use both bhindi
and sulphurous).  The residue (termed gunne-ka gund with a directness
that only the Jats can master) in this case, is great for rearing
pigs.

Long kept in the shadows, the Pigs of UP burst onto the national stage
in 2005 with the outbreak of Japanese encephalitis. As the human toll
rose, day on day, anxious members of UP's middle class demanded the
elimination of pigs and piggeries – long seen to the host carriers of
the deadly disease.  To their surprise, the state, for once, took the
side of UP's nearly 30 lakh pigs and vowed instead to eliminate the
mosquitoes held responsible for transmitting the deadly virus to
humans.

Any good Jat will tell you that pigs and sugar-mills go together, and
government statistics seem to agree.  The lush sugar fields of UP that
produce about 25 per cent of the country's sugar are also home to
almost twenty percent of its pigs.  Pigs and sugar, sugar and pigs.

While pigs will eat almost anything, they gorge on the gunne ka gund
combination of jungali bhindi and sugar residue.  The arithmetic of
pig-rearing is both, simple and exponential.  With Rs 25,000 in the
bank, you buy 5 sows.  In six months, each sow shall give birth 10
piglets, and so in 6 months you have 50 piglets, and in one year you
have 50 grown pigs, and another 50 piglets from your original stock of
5 sows.  Some will be male pigs, which you sell to butchers for pork
for about Rs 5,000 a pig, and some will be sows which you keep for
still more piglets. And then the money just keeps coming.  You buy
another small sugar mill, and another 10 sows.  You sell the seera for
desi sharab.  You use the residue to feed more pigs.  You buy a few
more acres of land – because pigs need space almost as much as they
need gunna ka gund, and pretty soon you are the largest land owner,
sugar producer and pig dealer in the village. Success!

But not everyone can deal in pigs; some, like Ashraf, refuse to have
anything to do with them.  Ashraf, for his part, advocates the low
road – for those who don't have the good fortune of starting with a
few acres of land.  The low road to success is designed for minimal
starting capital and moderate to high returns.  It starts at Yamuna
Pushta and leads straight back to the gaon.

Yamuna Pushta, home to much of Delhi's transient population, prone to
suspiciously frequent fires, object of judicial ire, and source market
for the long-eared Jamuna Par bakri.  Though not as fecund and fertile
as the UP sow, over the years the Jamuna Pari bakri has built a
reputation for itself, making it an essential part of any farm
portfolio.  It is said that if you buy a goat the day your daughter is
born, in 18 years you shall have a minimum of a lakh to give her on
her wedding.

It works like this.  The day your daughter is born, you buy a laila
for Rs 300.  In  a year's time, once your daughter is up and walking,
the goat gives birth to 2 kids, and another 2 in 6 months.  By the end
of the year, you have 4 kids and one nanny goat.  The female bakris
you keep for further breeding, and the male bakras you sell to the
butcher – thereby maintaining the natural cycle of life and death.  If
you are left with two bakris – keep one for yourself, and give the
other on batai.

Batai is a sytem where you give a bakri to a friend or neighbour for
free, on the condition that he feed it and look after it.  The bakri
is always yours, but its kids are divided among the stakeholders.
Thus, after the fourth year, you could have a whole flock of goats –
some that you keep and look after, and some you lease out on batai.
Keep the females, and sell the males for meat, and if you have no
qualms about dealing in pigs, set aside some money and buy a  few
pigs, and look out for the High Road at the next intersection.