A day in the life of Uday Kumar Jha,33 Two years ago,Uday Kumar Jha was at Booth Number 2 at the Delhi toll plaza of the Delhi-Gurgaon-Expressway. Jha,a toll supervisor,looked out of the window of his booth and knew the man looking back at him from the car window was drunk. I asked for his ID and I knew it was fake. I told him that but he got abusive. I thought Id let him go and opened the boom. But in a fit of rage,he got out of his vehicle,came up to me and slapped me hard. I was infuriated,but I did not lose my cool. In fact,I even apologised and politely asked him to leave. If I had reacted,there would have been an incident, says 33-year-old Jha. The Delhi Gurgaon Expressway,with its shiny tarmac,row of toll gates and glitzy cars,is a picture of sophistication. But here,along the highway and in the surrounding villages,there are undercurrents that are hard to miss. When the expressway was built,people from surrounding villages33 at the Kherki Dhaula toll plaza and 11 at the Delhi-Gurgaon plazawere exempted from paying a vehicle toll when they took the highway. However,they are asked to furnish a proof of their identity. And thats where passions rise and incidents,like the one Jha was speaking about,happen. On the night of September 22-23,Umesh Kant Pandey,a 23-year-toll attendant was shot dead at the Kherki Dhaula toll plaza of the Delhi Gurgaon Expressway. The killer had pulled up in his Bolero and had given Pandey a photocopy of his residence proof. When Pandey asked for the original document,the man shot him dead. Jha says that in his last five years in the jobfirst as a toll attendant and now as a toll supervisor for DS Constructions Expresswayhe has seen commuters walking up to booths,beating up attendants and destroying computers. We realise we make our living because of the money commuters give us. We always treat commuters with respect. But I have never heard of anyone being shot for merely Rs 27. We all were shocked after the incident, says Jha,who says he has managed tolls at the Kherki Dhaula plaza,where the shooting happened. Jha,who lives in Ranpuri in Mahipalpur,is on the 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift today. There are two other shiftsa morning shift from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the night shift from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Once he reaches his workstation,he checks on the attendance of the boys on duty. Then he meticulously checks each lane and allocates a group of attendants to each one. He also checks on technical snags that come up. He says he constantly advises his boys to remain calm,especially with commuters who lose their cool. When he himself is in one of the booths,he always tries to smile back at commuters. His aim is to let the vehicles pass as quickly as possible so that the cars do not pile up. Although our employers take care of us and we are insured,many of the employees do not know about these perks. By now,all of us have grown used to such boorish acts. Using expletives is so common that we do not even consider it bad behaviour, says Jha. There are other problems to tackle tooof the boom falling on cars which leads to a verbal dual between attendants and commuters. But drivers do not understand that this mostly happens when they drive on even when the signal at the gate is red. Since the boom is automatic,it falls when a vehicle approaches, he says. But Jha says there are perils in this job like in any other and each day is a learning experience. Though after the Kherki Dhaula,some of the attendants were jittery and scared,we have now settled down. There are marshals and police present at both the toll plazas, he says. We can only hope that such incidents do not happen in the future. A job is a job and all of us try to do it as efficiently as possible, he says.
