Motornama Roshanara

A ride through the  industrial district around Roshanara road, Delhi.
We come across various sites and histories of the "industrial age" in the city,  and its related narratives of automation, pollution, labour and closure.  
The tour is on cycle-rickshaws, with ricksha-wallas as narrators and guides.

Sites visited include houses in the shadow of the new metro, a hundred year-old ice factory, a car-cover karkhana, a derelict cinema, motor repair and reboring shops, a printing press transported from lahore, a famous clock-tower, amongst others. 

Roshanara road was till about 20 years ago the centre of the industrial city of Delhi, with Transport Nagar, the old Grand Trunk road, Sabzi Mandi, the Beej (seed) Market and related infrastructure all crowded around it. Old residents claim that it was not only Asia's largest engine repair market, but also an upper-class hangout with Palace Cinema and restaurants and other markets flourishing.
In a series of court-initiated "anti-pollution" drives in 1996 and 2000, Roshanara road's small and large industries were forced out of spaces they had been occupying since partition. As transport technology also changed, the repair industries could not compete effectively with new imported cars, authorised dealers and so on. In effect, the "motor" of industrial progress was moved out of the city, or moved past this sector in other ways.

Cycle rickshaws have survived this history. Not in a sense that they emerged victorious, but in that despite court orders (there is an ongoing Supreme court case on their licensing, the culmination of a long period of litigation), police brutality and resistance from resident associations, their numbers in the city have grown from about 20,000 in the early 1980's to more than 900,000 today. The vast majority of pullers live on the street, or in "informal" situations in front of shuttered shops, in side-lanes, etc. Recently, cycle-rikshaws have found favour with green groups and the eco-lobby, as a "non-polluting" form of transport. This discourse largely does not include considerations of where rickshawallas will live, their health and other needs, etc.
Our project then entered this historical and regulatory landscape, and offered members of the public: both locals and visitors, a tour of this landscape of lost punjabi confidence, old machines, labour, bodily risk and local histories.

We worked with about 25 rickshawallas who lived in and around the Beej market, Roshanara Road, for over two months. Workshops and meeting were held in the Roshanara Garden and other locations in the area.

See Tour Route and Credits tab for more.

Gallery: Motornama Roshanara