The donkeys that help to build the high-rise buildings (background) of Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi. Instead of using cranes, Indian builders employ the pack animals, which can carry loads of 30kg of sand.
By Doreen Fiedler
The donkeys plod laboriously up the unfinished stairway, halting from time to time on one of the concrete steps until Ranbir Singh urges them on with his wooden prod.
The pack animals, employed on a construction side in Noida in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, are each carrying a load of 30kg of sand. They also each bear a small part of India’s future on their backs.
Concrete skeletons reach upwards alongside each other in this city, a satellite of the capital at New Delhi. As yet the roads remain unfinished, and the construction workers live in simple huts amid the dust.
The dust will soon give way to skyscrapers with steel and glass facades and luxurious shopping malls.
On reaching the sixth floor, Singh unloads his donkeys. He gets Rs150 ($2.75) a day for himself and for each of his donkeys for their daily work. The construction workers using the sand to build the next level receive Rs140.
Viewed from this vantage point the modern India striving for recognition as a global economic player can be made out. Those parts of the industrial city that have already been completed glitter in the sunshine.
The city, set up less than 40 years ago, is home to innumerable IT firms, conference centres and to India’s Formula One circuit.
The donkeys start their cautious descent along the open stairway. “It does happen that a donkey bumps into the one in front and that one then falls to the bottom,” says Surajit Nath, a vet.
In that event a call goes out to the Donkey Sanctuary for which he works. The vets bring medication and bandages for the animals, whose owners are too poor to pay for the treatment.
“Often they don’t give the medicine to the donkeys,” Nath says. “But the biggest problem is that the donkeys are often overloaded and wear the wrong harnesses,” Nath says, pointing to spots on one of the donkey’s body where the thin straps are cutting into the animal.
Then he kneels and looks into the animal’s mouth. “At most two years old,” he says. When donkeys are put to work in this way at such an early age, they start suffering from arthritis after two more years and are ultimately unable to walk properly.
The Donkey Sanctuary tries to educate the owners on how to treat the animals properly. The organisation puts the number of donkeys in the vast country at around 1.85mn, many of them currently in use transporting bricks, stones and sand or pulling carts.
Over recent decades donkey power has frequently been used for projects large and small. They help in the mines, in digging tunnels and in building canals.
“I have been working with a donkey since I was 12,” says Singh, who is now 58. He complains that many companies have begun to use machines to do the work, pointing to the site next door where cranes are lifting the heavy loads.
“Donkeys take longer,” he acknowledges. His son no longer works at his side, opting instead to become a civil servant, but Singh aims to continue the tradition as long as he can.
“These animals are part of the family. We have the donkeys to thank for everything that we have,” he says. — DPA
