All the horses’ men

Not more than 500 metres from the Prime Minister’s residence and under the Delhi Chief Minister’s constituency are about 400 families living in the Race Course grounds in abysmal conditions

Sandeep Yadav Delhi

Prince of Rome, Rapido Gonzales, Shaolin, Elusive Prince, Madam Marina. Not only are their names royal, the treatment given to these horses will please blue blood. The humbly-named Rajesh Paswan, Prem, Ram Kumar and Harichand are among the humans at the service of these animals. It is not just the names that set the equine beings several notches over the humans.
Bang next to the Indian Prime Minister’s (PM) official residence, lies the sprawling Delhi Race Course Club. The Course is home to more than 470 horses, many of whom are owned by Delhi’s rich and famous. Under the innocent sounding term of “recreational activity”, betting worth millions takes place on each day. Not a fraction of the amount that passes hands reaches the workers hired to take care of the money-spinning horses, who are destined to live in a virtual slum, christened BR Camp, in the midst of plenty.
Haphazard, unauthorised electrification, dry taps, no school or dispensary, rough and tumble shelters and unkempt malnourished children running through narrow lanes lined with filth, faeces and muck, make the Camp uninviting. Necessity prompted residents to pool resources for a tube-well. An unwholesome odour wafts through the air. And all this, right under the nose of the PM.
Most migrants here are from BIMARU states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) and are in two categories. One, employed with the Race Course Club and the other who are not, but are stationed at the slum on the ground that they are descendents of one-time employees of the Club. Of late, this group has been demanding the allotment of their present house and land on the claim that they have been living here since generations. However, they have failed in their efforts in spite of repeated promises by politicians. The case lay pending in the court. Ramesh Kumar, 54, the pradhan of the BR Camp has been born in these clusters and runs a grocery shop at the entrance to the slum. Though earning decently, Ramesh lives in a mud hut covered by tin. The reason: the Club allows only its employees to build a brick house. “The Club does not allow me to bring in brick or concrete to build a pucca house. They say it is the Club’s land, but my argument is that if the Club did not need this land for 50 years, why now?” grumbles Ramesh.

The allegations are dismissed by the Club. The chief executive officer of the Race Course Club, RB Chauhan says that if they keep on allotting land to the ex-employees there will be no land left for the present employees of the Club, besides which the land belongs to the NDMC. “These people should realise that so far the Club has been very sensitive towards their needs. It is sheer encroachment of the Club land and so far we have been very kind toward them in not evacuating our land from their illegal occupation,” explains Chauhan.
However there is a raison d’être for this kindness. Though these people have no right to the land they occupy, they do have a voting right. The Gole Market constituency they come under of is represented by the Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit. No body messes with the Chief Minister’s voters. During her election campaign she had promised to regularise the slum. Though no move had been made in this regard so far it has forced the Race Club to continue with their so-called kindness. In 1976, barring around 80 families the inhabitants of this slum were rehabilitated on the outskirts of Khichripur. Today those resettled there are legal on their plot, but the ones left behind here have no ownership of house or land. “We were asked to stay here with the promise that something better would be offered to us in the future but we are still waiting” complains Ramesh. In fact the temple in the slum had been inaugurated by the late PM Mrs Indira Gandhi and she too assured the residents about the regularisation of the slum. “Indira Gandhi had promised us that she will pass the colony when she came here on October 18, 1984. But our bad luck that only a few days later she was assassinated,” rues Naimpal, another resident of BR Camp.
Of this exploited lot, at the bottom of the heap is the sizer, employed to look after the horses in the stable. The 24 x 7 work schedule and meagre salary has taken its toll. According to a survey conducted by the Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), a civil society organisation few years back, forty out of 400 workers were suffering from tuberculosis and 200 workers were found asthmatic. Many were found to have lost their fingers, as a result of a horse bite, others having lost their limbs, after being attacked by a horse, resulting in permanent disability. “In case of health problems, we usually visit the government hospital at Moti Bagh where, due to non-availability of medicines, we have to purchase the medicines from the market. This money is very rarely reimbursed by the club or the employer,” reveals Rajesh Paswan, a sizer from Bihar. These workers are also not covered under the Employees State Insurance Scheme (ESIS), as they are employed in, what is termed a "recreational activity". Labour laws too do not apply to them as they fall into the category of casual labourers. Needless to add, there is no job security.
The employee-employer relationship at this place is complex. The Race Course Club operates as an "entertainment club", and rents out small rooms for housing the horses. The owner of the horse hires a trainer to train the horses for racing, who further employs a "sizer" to take day-to-day care of the horse. For keeping a horse, each trainer earns around Rs 6,000 per month. He in turn pays his sizer a monthly salary of Rs 2,800. So, for all practical purposes, the trainers are the employees of the sizer, and he can hire and fire them at his wish.
The facilities for these sizers are pitiable. There is no provision for accommodation or toilets for these workers. They co-habit with the horse in the stable or outside in the open area. Sleeping under the sky is preferable because close proximity when the horses are restless can be dangerous. “Summers are all right, but in winters and the rainy season we have no option but to live at the mercy of the horse,” says Harpal, a sizer from Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh. While the horses have the facilities of fans, lights, heaters and even air coolers, the sizer bears the full impact of nature.

Yogesh Sood, Personnel Officer at the Race Club is quite clear that the Club has nothing to do with the plight of these workers. “The sizer or the trainer is not our employee and so their grievances against us are not right,” asserts Sood. The Delhi Race Club is a public limited company which only provides the stake to the horse that has won the race. It has the license for betting and pays tax to the government. The land it occupies belongs to the NDMC to which it pays the lease amount. Thus it is legally free of all responsibilities related to workers or horses. But the club is hardly generous towards its own legal employees who number about 150. Harichand, a watchman with the Club since 1978, gets about Rs 6,300 today after 28 years of service. He stays in the slum and has a legal electricity connection for which he has to pay Rs 100 every month. Ram Kumar, another employee of the Club works on the tracks and after 14 years of service is paid a trifle Rs 3,500. Their tale of woes only begins with this kind of pay structure. If the PM’s neighbour yearns
a life of dignity, which part of India
is shining?