Surender Paul Singh, SP Singh to the media and Tyre Singh to his professional allies, is officially a mere spokesman for the All India Motor Transport Congress which recently spearheaded a successful truck operators' strike. But behind the scenes he is much more "" he is part of the small think tank of the organisation, articulating its demands and planning agitations.
For us, the greater achievement was not the concessions we got out of the government but the fact that we could keep the agitation alive for nine days, he says.
The 48-year-old soft-spoken Sardar finds the trucking industry is bordering on sickness. This can be gauged from the condition of the tyre dealers and financiers who are the barometers of the industry. Loan recoveries in the last six months have been the worst in a decade, he says.
Singh tends to get pedantic at the least opportunity, cramming you with all the facts and figures that have come his way in his dealings with every aspect of the sector. He has put the data to good use, getting together with a few friends to set up the Indian Foundation of Transport Research and Training. He envisages its role as a base for informed lobbying. It has already done two studies "" on heavy trucks and truck drivers. In the pipeline are studies on light trucks, a user's guide to the new lubricant brands flooding the market and a fresh design and structure for the trucking industry.
Singh's first job took him to Calcutta where he acquired a fine grasp of spoken Bengali. You have to learn human values from Calcutta and grace in communication from the Urdu language, he says. His national volleyball coach father is an authority on the latter.
Singh has been behind the tyre dealers from the late seventies, working for a free play of market forces. Successful agitations have wrested major decisions from the government like delicensing the tyre industry and putting tyre imports on the OGL. He has also been spearheading agitations to remove hurdles like octroi and pathkar to allow for a free flow of traffic all over the country. Says Singh with satisfaction, We have been talking of reforms long before the nation started doing so. Only, we did not use the word and instead kept on 'agitating' for our 'demands'.
