As usual, I took a KSRTC bus to college today. As usual, I bought the ticket from the conductor and as usual he wrote the change that he owed me on the back of the ticket. After one stop from where I had boarded, the Ticket Checkers boarded the bus. These are people who do kind of surprise visit to the bus and check if the conductor has given tickets to all passengers and if there are passengers who are travelling without buying a ticket.
Generally, passengers and bus conductors have aversion towards each other. I used to think that this may be because the conductor doesnt give change properly, or may be rude in the way he/she talks to passengers. Conductor also doesnt sometime stop the buses on the stop. I had always thought that it was due to these daily friction that passengers dont like the conductor.
Today as usual, the Ticket Checkers checked all the tickets of the passengers. The conductor was very prompt and had given tickets to all the passengers. Hence the Ticket Checkers did not have any complain against him and hence he did not have to bear any penalty. Usually if any person is found travelling without tickets, the conductor has to pay the penalty of Rs. 300 from what I know.
After the Ticket Checkers left, conductor like a student who had just passed his exam, sighed. Some of the passengers started talking amongst themselves and with him, saying that Ticket Checkers were very disappointed, they did not get any reasons for penalty and during the discussion, I could see amazing solidarity of the passengers with the Conductor. He also was talking to them nicely and passengers were abusing the Ticket Checkers as people who always want to loot, etc.
This is when I realized that the reason why there is aversion between passengers and conductor is not because of bad behaviour or something. It is because for the passengers, he is the face of the oppressor called government. Everytime there is a hike in ticket prices, everytime they have to travel in fully packed buses, they blame the government and they see the conductor as the person representing government.
In that moment when Ticket Checkers came to check ticket, Conductor also became a part of the oppressed and hence they were easily able to show solidarity with him. This solidarity takes the form of corruption, when the government employee, to a large extent oppressed himself joins hands with the general public.
People blame the traffic police who catch them for violations as they see them as the face of the government. However the same police may becomes a friend when he gets the job done going against the rules as there is also on the side against the government.
Say politicians who earned crores of ruppee in Coal Scam may be corrupt but because they get the work done through the government for the local people, their corrupt acts are completely ignored because for people these are people just cheating the oppressor.
Tag: conductor
May 5, 2015
When government is the oppressor, corruption is the way of living
February 3, 2014
The structure of the society makes us fight and resent people close to us in the economic heirarchy
In the current hierarchical society based on the economic status, we are forced to fight those who are our neighbours in the structure. We crib and we hate those who are just below us or above us. We know that someday we will get outsmarted by those below us and hence we try unconsciously subjugate them. Similarly we want to outsmart those just above us and keep trying to attack them whenever given a chance.
I will try to share some experiences, trying to see why people totally strangers fight and resent each other just due to the social structure.
1) It is the last trip of the bus for the day, the time is around 9:30 pm and the bus is crowded with 50-60 people. The conductor is working tirelessly collecting ticket fare from passengers and give them tickets. All passengers look tired weary from their work and eager to reach their home early. Many of them dont give the conductor change and he has to frantically convince them that he doesnt have change and request them to search more in their pockets/wallets to find those hidden coins. The conductor is getting restless. Meantime there are few passengers from North India, who seem to be labourers who try to convey where exactly they want to go. Conductor completely restless keep shouting at them about giving him change in local language. The north indian passengers clueless of local language are not able to understand. Conductor just writes down something on the back of ticket and moves on. The north indian passengers are still wondering why they were not returned their remaining fare. In around 3 kms, the phase will change and before that the conductor is supposed to collect fares from all the passengers who have climbed in the previous phase. He asks the driver to stop for sometime as he has not finished collecting fare from everybody. After 2 mins, there is commotion from few passengers that they are simply being delayed. Conductor who is already restless shouts back at them saying that he is doing his work and if they want, they can take some other bus. The commotion grows with both the parties abusing each other. Few other passengers try to calm them down.
I standing on one side, start wondering.
“Naturally, none of them are interested in creating nuisance to others but still it is just that each one of them are so weary with their personal and work life that they vent out their anger easily on anybody. Conductor is doing his job, close to 12 hour shift, dealing with hundreds of different kind of passengers. Passengers tired from their work want to go back home as soon as possible. North Indian passengers are themselves thousands of kms away from their home and have their own anxiety in this place where they dont understand the language and are trying hard to make a living and send some money back home. Yet, none of them stop to wonder why they are fighting each other. Each one of them wants this one more day to pass, thanking God that they were able to earn something for their living and hopefully save a part of it for the future.”
2) I am sitting in a bus waiting at the traffic signal. From the window, I notice a Transgender lady demanding money from a girl sitting in an Auto. After few seconds, the girl in the auto takes our Rs. 10 and gives it to the transsexual lady while the Autowallah keeps waiting for the signal to become Green.
Again I wonder:
“Would that Autowallah have also asked extra Rs. 10 like the usual autowallahs in Bangalore. Did that girl sitting in the auto agreed to pay that extra amount? What would the Autowallah think about his way of earning that Rs. 10? Does the girl see this Rs. 10 which she gave to the Transgender lady differently than what she would give to this autowallah?
Without doubt, it is a sad part of our society that the only way we allow transgenders to live is either by begging or by being prostitutes. We have now people who argue frantically that now some of the men have started dressing as transgenders and hence we shouldnt give them alms. Ofcourse these people dont discuss why we have the society which forces men to become transgenders so that he can beg and earn his food/drink.
However coming back to the point, I wondered if the autowallah who would have probably asked for the extra Rs. 10 felt ashamed or pitied himself. He who is working hard and earning, requests for the same Rs. 10 and is denied and infact abused by people generally for disobeying the law which has fixed the fare rates, where as a transgender who begs for the money is given money.
