Political poetry at its best: on the back of Pakistan’s rickshaws

Poems about price hikes, political pleas and even apologies to girlfriends; for busy rickshaw drivers, the best place to get their message across is the back of their vehicle. So how did the concept of "rickshaw poetry" come about?

The rickshaw came to the Indian subcontinent in the early 1930s, but it was only after the fuel crisis that followed World War Two that it became such a widespread commercial transportation solution.
Drivers started painting the back of their rickshaws in the late 1970s; not only in Pakistan but in India and Bangladesh too. The period was a very politically charged time for Pakistan. East Pakistan had just broken off (in 1971), and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first democratically elected leader of Pakistan, was publicly hanged in 1979 after a controversial trial.

The next decade saw successive leaders come and go, and witnessed the deterioration of the social, economic and intellectual state of the country at the hands of unstable political conditions, religious extremism, corruption and mismanagement of resources. None of these wounds have healed to date, and it's not surprising that the cynicism of the middle to lower classes has come to be visible in rickshaw art and poetry.

The people who decorate the rickshaws are called ‘body makers', and they do work for buses, trucks and vans too. If the rickshaw user wants something painted, then the scripting and material charges would be around Rs. 1,000 to 1,500 [€9 - €14]. There's a sticker-based technique as well, which makes it easier to change the text, and it is cheaper too, at around Rs. 600 to 800 [€5 - €7].

Full report here France 24