Before the pandemic Lakhan Kumar had a small taxi rental service of his own. For almost a year now all five of his cars were rented out to ABP news network, deployed to pick up and drop off staff in the Delhi-NCR region.                                                                                      He himself drove one of them and enjoyed a relative safety in the occupation. As most of the work was being done remotely Lakhan suffered serious loss and was forced to sell most of cars. From the last of salvageable money, he bought himself an auto which is now the only source of income for his family of two.

On a busy afternoon in July, I hired Lakhan’s auto from a junction at Chattarpur. He was observant and engaging from the get go, sharing his opinions on the lockdown and the crisis of public transport amidst the rising competition among independent drivers such as him.

“I believe the lockdown did nothing to save the poor from the virus, the rich sat behind their tall walls while our world completely went under. Our survival was the last thing on their (government’s mind).”

He comments on how public health system has become an industry for accumulating profits. How can they expect people to stay healthy when they feed us genetically modified food, polluted water and poisonous air yet still the poor is far more resistant to such outbreaks because we do not have the luxury to recuperate in expensive hospitals and give up a days’ worth of pay, he adds. 

Lakhan relates the numerous incidents where his auto had to work as an ambulance for taking emergency patients to the hospital in areas near his home in Sangam Vihar remarking on the futility of driving them there. The medicines as per his experience did nothing to save those who were beyond saying, medical expenses only adding to the debt.

“Do we not have the right to free healthcare? at least for those of us who clearly cannot afford it? It is as if we do not exist in the eyes of the system but for when they need a vote” he laments.

He goes on to critique the system for encouraging the youth to get an education when nothing let alone the degree ensures social security for an ordinary citizen. Having completed his bachelors in BBA in English, he feels his job as a driver pays better and allows greater flexibility than working in a corporate environment.

“It seems as if you cannot live a comfortable life in this system unless you exploit the next person”, he says. Lakhan is 34 now and raising a son of his own whose future he worried about. “I had always wanted to be a musician; I write poetry and songs but could I pursue my passion? What guarantees that my son could be who his wants to be when he grows up?” Lakhan feels a crippling sense of dissociation from his self as he goes on with his day of taking people to their destination.

His disillusionment he believes is a by-product of the system we all are complicit in creating. There is no space for individual expression in a system of ever increasingly

productivity and growth that sees all of us cogs in global machinery of profit generation, he feels. 

Very few of us now question the lives we are given to live, for someone else, determined by someone else. I only plan to save this one part of me my perspective and the way I experience the world. All other promises of uniqueness are but illusions we create to avoid looking at the real picture.

On asking if he believes in an idea of change, he says he is hopeful for the future of humanity still. “Even if it appears to be getting worse, I have hope and protecting that faith is important because if we gave it up, we shall have nothing to fight for and make our subservience permanent. That is the sad reality of the middle classes, they were first ones to surrender to the logic of development and modernity. 

What we are told is development and modernity might be very regressive for us as people, particularly because it is always driven by the profit of a select few. We need to keep the revolution alive. Little resistances everyday be it a simple act of extending help to your community at a time when draconian measures seek to fragment and cleave social life as we know it by turning us against each other.  

After a long pause, he said, it is imperative to never lose sight of the fact that a complete erosion of the collective would be the death of the individual.”

Interviewed for Kalam Foundation on 03-08-2021