Mar 25

Mar 25 Why New York taxi drivers support farmers protesting in Delhi

by Ignatius Chithelen*

About once a week, I walk fifteen minutes to the Doaba (land of two rivers) Deli, a restaurant located on Columbus Avenue, between 106th and 107th streets, in New York City.

It occupies two rectangular rooms of about 150 square feet each. In one room, eight different vegetable dish choices are displayed behind a glass case, with sweets and other snacks within easy reach in front of the deli case. The kitchen, in the rear of the room, is hidden from view by a high double-wide refrigerator with glass doors that show a variety of cans and bottles of sodas and juices.

The second room has three plastic laminated tables with four metal chairs each, a two-feet wide wooden counter along a wall and two large restrooms in the rear. A television, up in a corner of the ceiling, is tuned to a cable channel showing Bollywood song and dance videos.

I often visit Doaba with friends. We pay $10 for a vegetarian thali (plate) – in my case chana (chickpeas) masala, saag (spinach) and dal (lentils) - and two potato samosas.

Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, which was imposed in New York in March last year, we sat and ate at one of the tables. During lunch and dinner hours, the tables were occupied by Indian students from Columbia University, whose campus is a 10-minute walk away.

I first went to Doaba in 2016 when Devansh Mehta, who was then studying at the Columbia Journalism School, said we should meet there for authentic, cheap desi food. On the Yelp site, it has a 4.5 Star rating - with 83 photographs - from 227 reviewers, mostly students, marking it as a popular, top-rated Indian restaurant in New York City.

Most of Doaba’s clients, though, are yellow taxi and Uber drivers who stop by partly to use the restrooms. They buy a thali or a $5 vegetable and rice or roti (bread) plate and stand and eat at the counter, while chatting in Punjabi.

Many drivers walk into the kitchen to chat with Joginder Singh, the owner, and his cook. After paying, they leave a large tip in the plastic jar on the counter. Those with vehicles parked illegally pick up their food and leave quickly to avoid being fined by a traffic cop.

One evening last November, while waiting for our food, I heard chants of protests in Hindi and Punjabi relayed by the television’s Indian news channel. In halting Hindi, I asked Joginder if the TV coverage was about the farmer protests in Delhi. He nodded yes.

Since then, during my visits, I see the taxi drivers discussing and watching the farmer protests on TV. I assumed they support the farmers, who are 7,300 miles away in Delhi, since they have relatives and friends who farm in India.

Last week, wondering if the taxi drivers own farmland in India, I went to Doaba around 4 pm to chat with Joginder, before he got busy serving dinner.

It was a nice spring afternoon, with temperatures around 55* F (12* C.) A steady stream of drivers stopped to use the restroom. On their way out, they got a hot cup of tea for $1.50 and a box of biscuits or a piece of barfi (sweet) for $1.

Joginder is from a village near Pratapgarh, Punjab. The drivers call him Sarpanch, head of the village. In the 1990’s, he was twice elected Sarpanch of his village as a Congress Party candidate. About 5’ 6” tall and of medium built, he is 66-years-old. While calm and chatting with customers, he appears to be figuring you out.

He owns eight acres of canal irrigated farmland in Punjab, which he leased to a neighbor when he moved to the U.S. The farmer grows wheat, rice and sugarcane.

Roughly 40% of the 21,000 yellow taxi drivers in New York are from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. There are an additional 80,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in the city, but most of them do not operate full time. A sizeable number of full-time Uber and Lyft drivers are also from South Asia.

Most of the Indian drivers are from Punjab, mainly Sikhs. Like Joginder, also a Sikh, they own farmland in India which they have leased to relatives or other farmers. Many of the Sikhs wear green turbans; while Uber drivers, who own their cars, prominently display posters on their vehicles seeking support for the farmers in India. (See photograph).

The taxi drivers in New York realize that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2020 decision, to stop providing a minimum support price for food grains and other agricultural produce, will likely lead to lower income, and even losses, for farmers in India.

Every nation, including the developed ones, subsidize their farmers in direct and indirect ways for economic, national security and political reasons. In 2020, for instance, farmers in the U.S. were directly paid a record $46 billion in subsidies while farmers in the European Union got $64 billion. In 2019, Japanese farmers received $38 billion in grants from their government. This was about 40% of the value of the nation’s total farm output, the highest level of farm subsidy among the developed countries.

In addition, countries protect their farmers through import tariffs and other indirect measures. For instance, due to tariffs, the current wholesale price of sugar in the U.S. is $0.30 per pound, double that of world sugar prices.

In contrast, Modi’s farm laws will hurt Indian farmers and the economy. It also increases the uncertainty over supply of food grains, which is already unpredictable in India since it annually depends on the level of monsoon rainfall.

Farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, who are represented in large numbers among those protesting in Delhi, supply the bulk of India’s wheat and rice needs. Once the government stops supporting stable prices for such essential food grains, their supplies will fluctuate widely from harvest to harvest and could collapse if farmers lose money on their produce. This will likely push India back to being dependent on food imports and foreign government hand-outs, as was the case up until the 1960’s.

India, Modi’s government says, currently produces a surplus of wheat and rice. Yet 190 million Indians are malnourished and the nation ranks 94 out of 107 on a Global Poverty Index. Modi needs to tackle major problems with grain storage and transportation, in order to eliminate malnourishment, instead of pursuing policies that endanger the nation’s food self-sufficiency.

In 2009, Joginder emigrated from India to the U.S. to improve the education and job prospects for his three sons. He followed his brother, who used to drive a taxi in New York. However, with money from the sale of an apartment he owned in Queens, New York, and a bank loan, the brother bought a 40-room motel, with a restaurant and bar with about 100 seats, in McAllen, Texas, 70 miles from the Mexican border..

“He is doing well, especially the restaurant and bar,” says Joginder. “I went to see him in Texas. He sent his three kids to college. They now have good jobs.” Joginder has a third brother who drives a taxi in London.

Joginder set up Doaba soon after arriving in the U.S. His wife used to work with him but had to step away due to health issues. In 2018, his oldest son died of a heart attack. He was 38 and had no children. His widow, who was from Punjab, remarried in the U.S. “What was she going to do in my house after my son was gone?” says Joginder.

His second son, who finished college, works in New York and is married. His third son only finished high school. “He does not want to go to college. Has no job,” says Joginder. The youngest son runs Doaba on Sundays, giving his father a day of rest; the cook works seven days a week. At times, the son is impatient, telling me he has work to do when I am slow to order.

Over the past year, Doaba’s business has suffered in sync with that of New York City’s taxi drivers. After the COVID-19 lockdown began last March, the drivers had few or no customers. Many of them stopped working and about a third of them, or their family members, caught the virus, according to a union survey.

At first Joginder kept the restaurant open, but only from 10 am to 6 pm. One evening last summer when I walked over, I found Doaba was closed. Every week thereafter, I phoned and, getting no answer, wondered if it was forced to close down, perhaps permanently, like a thousand other restaurants in the city.

When I visited in September, Joginder said he closed down in the summer since there were no customers.

During my visit last week, I asked Joginder how his business was faring. “It has picked up,” he replied. “But only a third of my yellow taxi drivers are back. Many of them are bankrupt.”

About half of the yellow taxi drivers owe an average $600,000, according to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a labor union. The drivers took on the debt to buy medallions, which are required to operate a yellow taxi in New York City.

Since 1996, after the city stopped issuing new medallions. their number remains frozen at 5,630. A medallion was typically used by three different drivers a day, each working an eight-hour shift. A handful of investors, who grabbed control of the medallions, kept manipulating the prices higher, while earning rent on the medallions by leasing it out to drivers.

Medallion prices kept rising, even after Uber began service in New York City in 2011; reaching a peak of $1.3 million in 2014. Then, as the use of Uber and Lyft cars expanded, demand for yellow taxis began dropping. Investors began selling their medallions, pushing prices lower. Yellow taxi drivers, long waiting for an opportunity, eagerly bought them. They hoped to make money by renting the medallion to other drivers and expected prices to resume climbing higher. About half of the medallions are now owned by taxi drivers.

Today, with more than twice as many Uber and Lyft drivers as there are yellow taxi drivers in the city, demand for yellow taxi rides has collapsed. Due to the sharp drop in their income, yellow taxi drivers who own medallions cannot make interest payments on their huge loans If they sell their medallions, currently priced under $130,000, they will have to find half a million dollars to repay their loans.

About 1,000 medallion owners have declared bankruptcy. Since 2018, nine drivers have committed suicide, including one found in his yellow taxi near the official home of New York City’s mayor.

During the current COVID-19 environment, many medallion owners do not have health insurance and risk losing their homes to the banks who loaned them the money.

Since there are few Uber and taxi drivers working overnight, Joginder and his cook work from 10 am to 10 pm, standing most of the time.

Last Saturday, a friend and I went to Doaba at 9:15 pm. We sat and ate at a table since there was only one other customer, a taxi driver eating at the counter. The cook asked us to finish quickly; he was eager to go home and get some rest. Fifteen minutes later, he moved the tables behind us and started sweeping the floor.

While leaving, I asked Joginder if he expects good results from the farmer protests in Delhi. “It’s going to be difficult,” he said with a smile. “Everything is in the hands of the Lord above.”