The price of being a shoe shine boy

Mumbai: Mumbai's shoe shine boy was immortalised in Amitabh Bachchan's 1975 blockbuster Deewar, but the grim reality for the city's shoe shiners hides a deeper truth - they need to cough up as much as Rs 1 lakh in bribes to be allowed onto a local train station platform.

If you thought that a poor man could come to city of Mumbai and survive by polishing shoes on a railway platform, think again, because the poor man will have to shell out a Rs 1 lakh just for a three to four square feet place on a busy railway platform.

Rs 1 lakh is the amount which could last these people a decade if they are in the contractor's good books or could have them thrown off the very platform once the contract draws to an end.

With a daily take home of a paltry Rs 150, it's a pittance that these show shine boys actually get to keep.

The rates vary at different stations - Rs 25,000 at a small station to Rs 1 lakh at Churchgate or CST.

Says a shoe shine boy, Kanhaiya Singh, who is incidentally the brother of a contractor, "First you send the shoe shine boys t these railway platforms, but then they get to stay here only if they have money. They have to give up to Rs 1 lakh to stay at a good station."

The railway gives out a contract to different co-operative societies. The secretaries of such societies work as contractors for different stretches.

They employ a fixed number of shoe shiners, charging them a daily rent - roughly Rs 12 rupees a day - though this is a practice often not followed.

Says a shoe shine boy Daya Ram, "The contract is for 54 people but the contractor makes 140 people work and charges money from all of them."

Many shoe shine boys have taken loans from moneylenders to pay contractors, but as platforms get crowded out by migrant workers from villages hoping to polish and earn, the lack of any new stations coming up only spike the price for each new seat on these routes.

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