Cycle Rickshaw

Millions of people worldwide work outside the law as street vendors in order to earn a living. However, they often work in fear of police evictions and confiscations since their work is in many places considered illegal. In this context, formalization (steps towards legalization) is often portrayed as a model for empowerment that allows poor street vendors to improve their well-being. Formalization, as a model to manage street vending, is widely promoted by various international development organizations. While important, studies of formalization show that street vendors often resist state control, and the majority continues to work outside the law.
The main research question guiding this study is: how does formalization of street vendors in Bogotá enable and/or hinder their well-being? To examine this question, this study uses an ethnographic approach and the concept of social control within the tradition of sociology of law. The data for this study was collected through ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2014 in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. Three groups were studied: vendors within the transitional zones (a formalization program), two rickshaw driver associations, and itinerant ice cream vendors.
The main findings illustrate that although street vendors work outside the law, they do not operate in a state of chaos or anarchy. Quite the opposite, law and other forms of social control are present in their work. These practices of control often affect their well-being. Despite harsh working conditions, well-being according to them means more than economic survival, and often, street vendors strive to improve their lives and gain independence in their work.
Another finding is that formalization is often directed toward the more established vendors and does not account for the fact that new individuals arrive on the streets every day trying to make a living. Often, the most vulnerable groups (immigrants, women, the newly unemployed) lack the time and knowledge to formalize or simply are not targeted in formalization programs. Without a deep understanding of how social control already operates, the state runs the risk of developing formalization initiatives that undermine the well-being of the most vulnerable groups. Thus, this study of everyday forms of social control provides empirically based insights into the ways law influences the lives of those working outside the law.

Mahatma Gandhi once quoted “I would prize every invention of science made for the benefit of all.” and embracing upon Mahatma’s idea of “doing more, for less, for more”, Fazilka, the town of god-fearing and hopeful people have given something innovative to this world by following the legacy of great Gandhian Engineering named “Ecocabs”.  Low cost solutions under the concept of democratize technology as a Para transit mode of public transport solution to the already existed Indian Rickshaw operation in the India for the world’s poorest citizens, while aiming to creating profit for them and making it improvising traditional rickshaw and overall well managed operations to benefit each stakeholder.
Ecocabs are the name given to Traditional Indian Rickshaw operation by adding it with facilities like dial-a-rickshaw through organized network first time in the world at Fazilka. Fazilka is an Indian Border town in Punjab state with population less than hundred thousand.

Through a longitudinal case study we illustrate how a social enterprise was able to blend
mobile communications technology and web applications with a traditional local transport
system of cycle rickshaw in order to create a community driven low-cost social innovation. We
demonstrate how this intervention catapulted an entire ecosystem resulting in inclusive
development at the extreme end of the bottom of the pyramid.
On the basis of our findings, we propose that social entrepreneurship originates in the context
of absence of opportunity, may be even at a cost to oneself and while evaluating the solution
to social problems, social entrepreneurs may not quit as readily when they find the solution to
be financially unattractive, rather make an attempt to make it financially sustainable. We
recommend that during the entire social enterprise creation process, social entrepreneurs
need to frame the social problem around the lives of beneficiaries and develop a holistic
approach that goes beyond offering a product/service.

Non-motorized transportation (NMT) services have vital role in urban public transportation for developing nations’ megacities like Dhaka. Yet NMT services are not promoted and encouraged as fuel free public transportation mode. In order to depict the importance, and promoting NMT, this study developed a weighted index to reflect the situation of NMT services in Dhaka city combining factors such as accessibility, waiting time, parking facilities. In measuring the accessibility, service coverage score has been estimated, while for waiting time score field survey conducted at ten selected traffic intersections. In addition, parking facilities score, provision of designated parking near intersections investigated. Using these scores, following several standard, Non-motorized transportation facility index has been estimated. It has been found that; majority (around 75%) of the areas in Dhaka city has NMT access, and NMT are banned on some major arterial roads. Moreover, the average waiting time is around four minutes, to get a NMT vehicle. However, there are no designated parking facilities for NMTs in Dhaka. In brief, NMT has great access, and availability is satisfactory, though parking remains a major problem. Thus NTFI concluded that, NMT has massive potential to be an important public urban transportation mode for Dhaka city.

This paper provides an account of emergent embodied masculinities amongst a group of rickshaw drivers in Dhangadhi, a city in far-­‐west Nepal. This paper's purpose is to explore emergent Janajati (or indigenous) masculinities, which are changing as a consequence of rural to urban migration. Within urban areas, working as a rickshaw driver has profound implications for both the bodies and the masculinities of the men involved. Tensions emerge between the rickshaw drivers' expected and encouraged performances of masculinity and their own bodies. Such tensions are explored using a variety of ethnographic material collected through two periods of fieldwork in Kailali district, Nepal in 2009 and 2012. During fieldwork the author generated material principally through interviews and participant observation. This paper focuses on certain forms of competition and the denial of pain, both of which are integral to being rickshaw drivers, in light of their implications for masculine bodies and performances.

Technological advancement and evolution of machinery is representative of human capabilities and progress signifying amelioration of human conditions. This has led to increased human control on the environment by the use of these instruments of production by increasing the range and preciseness of response. (Kumar, Rajesh; Agarwala, Arun; Instrument Design and Development Centre, Indian institute of Technology, Delhi, 2014) It is in the property and nature of machineries and the analogy of technical advancement that the achievement of man’s control over the machinery need not be limited only to its immediate operant. This aspect is being exploited by the capitalist modes of production and utilized to the maximum.
Economic fashioning of technology is nothing but social shaping of technology. This is parallel to the Marxist model of economic fashioning where economic calculations and ‘laws’ are very particular and specific to various models and structures of society and not universal. Technological advancement and progression is very much characterized by regional variations, geographical attributes and cultural pointers and these factors highly contribute to the design essence and orientation of a product. Various cities have various rickshaw designs. The rickshaws of Calcutta and Delhi vary greatly in their design and aesthetic looks which is in coherence with the geographic, economic, social, cultural, political and environmental model particular to the city. Every society has to identify their costs and interests in respect to design selection and technical choices and thus the forms and patterns of that choice made is always fluctuating.
As technological advancement defined and redefined the goals of innovation with the progress of time, a wider acceptance of these progressive scientific ideas and models became fundamental and prerequisite for achieving these goals. Terms, phrases and theories like ‘scientific belief system’, ‘scientific temper’, ‘scientific method’ and ‘broader scientific outlook’ reverberated through the innovative design application and evolution of the rickshaw over the period of its existence.