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.
Shamsher was a porter at the Attari-Wagah border between India and Pakistan. But for the last three years, he has been working at his brother’s garage
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.
Left : National flags of India and Pakistan at the Attari-Wagah border. Right: At the Attari Integrated Check Post, trucks carrying various goods would arrive in India every day from Pakistan and goods from India similarly crossed into Pakistan. But trade relations between the neighbouring countries broke down after the Pulwama incident of 2019 and the porters were badly hit
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.”
Left: Sucha Singh, a porter from Kaunke, a village near the border, now works as a mason with his son. Right: Harjeet Singh and his neighbour Sandeep Singh were both porters. Harjeet now works at an orchard and Sandeep is a daily wage labourer. They are repairing the roof of Harjeet's house in Attari
Left: Baljit (standing) and his elder brother Sanjit Singh (seated), are residents of Roranwala. Baljit lost his job as a porter at the border. Right: In their family of seven, the only stable source of income is the 1,500 rupees widow pension that their mother Manjit Kaur received every month
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.”
