Coolies who became gangmen want old job back

NEW DELHI: It sounded like liberation for coolies who became gangmen. But the celebrations proved short-lived. The ���upgrade��� came with long hours and longer treks, often under a hot sun, along railway lines and the hard physical labour of checking and fixing fish plates.
As they contemplated their ���elevated��� status, many coolies felt that life was better on the platform than along the tracks.They began to yearn for the ���billas��� (badges) they had traded for becoming gangmen and have now turned to railway minister Lalu Prasad ��� the author of the swap scheme ��� to get back to carrying loads.
What the coolies who opted to become gangmen did not anticipate was working in shifts and in a disciplined manner. Though being a coolie meant carrying heavy load, there was the option of working as much as was necessary.
There were breaks to sit down and puff at a bidi and even decide whether to skip a train and wait for the next one. A large number of such gangmen have already met Lalu, and on Tuesday about 1,100 former porters also called on steel, chemical and fertilisers minister Ramvilas Paswan to press their demands.
Lalu, who clearly thought he was doing the coolies a good turn, might well be feeling a bit bemused at the unintended consequences of his good Samaritan act.
A total of 13,810 licenced porters from all the 16 railway zones were made gangmen, after due screening and medical tests, a few months ago according to the directive of the railway minister.
A populist and novel measure, the minister had announced in his budget speech in February that licenced porters would be inducted into railways as gangmen and other Group D posts.
Though the initial reaction of the porters was euphoric, soon many realised that they were not cut out for the job. To their horror, they realised that they would have to work for fixed hours. The work involved walking long distances, an average 10 km a day, along the tracks to ensure there were no cracks and fish plates were in order.
They also had to work for fixed 8 to 12 hours in harsh weather. ���We are posted at places which are far away. My family lives in Jaipur, while I have been asked to work in far away Punjab,��� said Raj Pal, who had come to meet Paswan.
Babbu Amaruddin and Sattar Khan, both former porters, said, ���It is dirty work. We are expected to keep the tracks safe as well as clean, remove the grass or any dangerous growth and often find tracks littered with human excreta.���