IPS – Indian Porter Service - Porter is now gang man – Lalu's gift to the red shirts.
Legal Corner Icon — the image was hosted by the publisher and was not captured.Immediately after Kerala was declared a hundred percent literate state, I landed up in Ernakulam (Kerala) with my wife. As we hired a porter to carry our luggage out of the station, my wife, a teacher wondered whether this porter was literate. I asked this porter if he could arrange reservation for our return journey. He said, “sure” and asked for our names which he wrote down in beautiful English, much better than my wife or I could have ever done. I told my wife, “he is not only literate, his English writing is much better than ours”. You can't miss them at any railway station, the red shirted porter. Many of us believe that the porter is a mercenary out to rob us, but after all he carries your luggage across several platforms and rail bridges, fort a small fee. When you bargain with him and fail and decide to carry your luggage yourself, you realise you can't do it yourself and finally hire him for the same fee he asked in the beginning or a little more. The porter is as old as the Railways itself. Even Abraham Lincoln is said to have worked as a porter! These red shirts who look like card carrying members of the Communist party had never got any benefits from the REDS and it is now our native Laloo Yadav who has come to their rescue. These porters are now to be government servants – they may refuse to carry your luggage now, but one section of the downtrodden masses is upgraded. The porter knows the station inside out and would be a great asset to the Station Master.
Will the elite PC emulate the rustic Laloo? There are a large number of contingent employees working in the Customs and Central Excise Department for more than two decades hoping that one day their services will be regularised and they can also take rest like the rest of the employees of the Department. Will PC do something for them?