After working in a restaurant for a few years, he applied for a hack, or cab driver’s, license. He joined a workforce that was becoming predominantly South Asian. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), an advocacy group for cab drivers, estimates that more than 60 percent of all yellow cab drivers are Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi.

Walia became a cab driver because he wanted to be his own boss as much as possible. “I want to have my own independent life and the chance to make my life and my family’s life better,” he says, adding that he can do this more successfully without a boss telling him what to do all the time.

Driving a cab also makes it easier for him to participate in family life. He begins his day by dropping his daughters, ages 19, 15 and 11 to college or school and his wife to her job at a department store in Richmond Hill, Queens where they live. He does the shopping and other errands during the day while his wife works. He begins his shift at 4.30 p.m.

“It’s a tough job and you have to work many hours,” says Walia. Cab drivers in New York City work a shift of 12 hours that typically begins at either 5 a.m. or 5 p.m. The Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), a part of the mayor’s office, regulates the yellow cab industry. Potential drivers have to take special courses including English language fluency, the geography of the city and defensive driving classes. After obtaining a hack license, drivers have to buy or lease one of 12,187 yellow cab medallions that the City of New York sells to individuals, garages or brokers who in turn also sell or lease the yellow cabs to drivers.

Walia says he makes about $1,350 a week, of which he takes home $700 after paying $650 to the broker who leases him his medallion. He estimates that he saves $200 a week by owning his car. Since the economic downturn, exacerbated by the attacks of Sept. 11, maintaining that level of income has been difficult. “I have to work a lot harder to make the same amount of money,” says Walia ruefully.

The yellow cab industry depends heavily on tourism. “People are afraid to fly, they are not using the airports as much, so business has become much slower,” he says. “I used to start my shift there, but I go straight to midtown now.” The usual slow periods are the summer, when most of the tourists come in buses and don’t use yellow cabs unless they have a lot of shopping or luggage, and the period after Christmas, when many cab drivers take their vacation. But not Walia. “It’s a tough time, I have to work,” he says with a shrug.

Walia is a member of NYTWA and on the group’s organizing committee. Founded in 1998, the group came into prominence later that year when it successfully organized a strike to protest what it saw as unfair new TLC regulations. Walia joined both the strike and the group, which has now become the cab drivers’ unofficial union. Walia concedes his fiercely independent streak seems to conflict with his active participation in NYTWA. “I work only for me, but there has to be unity,” he says. “The TLC only cares about passengers, they don’t care about our rights.” He adds that drivers need to steer clear of the garages. “They have no respect for drivers,” he says.

Dealing with garages and the TLC is only part of the cab drivers’ list of obstacles. A mistrustful public is another. But Walia dismisses this popular dislike of cab drivers as a disdain of immigrants in general. “Some of them have told me to go back to my country,” says this proud U.S. citizen, grinning. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, many immigrant cab drivers faced some harassment, and Walia was no exception — his car windows were smashed and he was unable to work for a week while his car was being repaired. Since then, Walia has prominently displayed patriotic paraphernalia in his cab to reassure customers that he is no terrorist. “But it is also because I am (an) American citizen,” he says reflectively.

Surinder Singh Walia does plan to go back to his country one day. “I want to go back to Delhi and live on my family’s property, but only after my daughters are married and settled,” he says. “I want to go back and eat the fresh food,” he says, gently patting his impressive belly. “All the food here tastes like frozen food. You get such nice bakris (goats) in my country.”

In his zeal, integrity, hard-work and entrepreneurial spirit, Walia and his fellow cab-drivers are as much siliconindians as the successful engineers in Silicon Valley. It’s a matrix of upbringing, opportunity, luck and character that defines who went which way and achieved what. The end goal is the same, an honorable, comfortable life, a happy family, and a socio-cultural balance in life.

As Walia says, “I came here with hope to make a better life, with a dream to make sure my family could live a good life. Everybody can work hard. But you have to have hope and faith.”
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