Attari-Wagah porters: caught in the crosshairs

Around four kilometres from the border of Pakistan, Shamsher Singh is at work in his brother’s garage, going through his tools. He has been working here as a mechanic for the past three years, but not out of choice.

Shamsher, 35, is a third-generation porter who once worked at the Attari-Wagah border between India and Pakistan. His family belong to the Prajapati community, listed as Other Backward Class (OBC) in the state.

At this border of Punjab with Pakistan, hundreds of trucks carrying cement, gypsum and dry fruits would once arrive into India every day. Trucks carrying tomatoes, ginger, garlic, soybean extract and cotton yarn among other goods, would similarly cross over to Pakistan.

Shamsher was one of almost 1,500 porters whose job was “to unload and load these goods onto trucks for their onward journey at the border crossing.” There are no factories or industries in the area; landless residents of villages located within a 20 km radius of the Attari-Wagah border rely heavily on cross-border trade for their livelihood.

A lot changed in 2019 when 40 Indian security personnel were killed in Pulwama in a terrorist attack that New Delhi blamed on Islamabad. Following this, India withdrew the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trade status granted to Pakistan, and imposed a 200 per cent customs duty on imports. Pakistan retaliated with trade restrictions after India’s abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.

Porters living in nearby border villages, and over 9,000 families in Amritsar district were badly hit, says this  2020 study by the Bureau of Research on Industry and Economic Fundamentals (BRIEF) .

Jobs in Amritsar city have the added expense of a 30-kilometre trip on the local bus – the journeys cost almost Rs. 100. Labour work pays around Rs. 300, so Shamsher says, “what’s the point in bringing home 200 rupees a day?”

Hundreds of kilometres from Delhi where diplomatic decisions get made, the porters feel the government is not listening, but having a member of Parliament from the ruling party will help amplify their voice. Further, an MP would push for reopening the border which would restore their jobs.

Now, work is available at the border seasonally, only when trucks from Afghanistan arrive with crops. Shamsher says they pass the work on to older porters for whom finding casual labour work is more difficult.

Porters here understand the gesture of shutting the border was to retaliate. “ Par jeda ethe 1,500 bande auna da de chuley thande karan lage sau baari sochana chahida [But they should also consider how they have caused the cooking fires of many families here to go cold],” says Shamsher.

For five years, the porters have been petitioning the authorities, but to no avail.  “There isn’t any ruling government at both state and centre who we haven’t approached with our mang patra [memorandum] to reopen the border in the last five years,” he adds.

Sucha Singh, a Dalit porter from Kaunke village says that “the sitting MP from Amritsar, Gurjeet Singh Aujla from the Congress party, has often spoken in Parliament to the Modi government about reopening the border for the livelihood of the residents. However, the government did not act on it because his party is not in power at the centre.”

After losing his work as a porter, the 55-year-old Dalit Mazhabi Sikh has been working as a mason with his son, earning around Rs.300 rupees a day.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections 2024, the overwhelming consensus was a curious one. Shamsher explains: “We wanted to press NOTA for this election, but our livelihoods [as porters] depend entirely on the central government. We have no desire to vote for the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], but it is a necessity.”

Election results declared on June 4, 2024 confirmed that Congress candidate Gurjeet Singh Aujla retained his seat. Whether he will have an influence on border politics is to be seen.