Taxis and Globalization: Biju Mathew on ROS

Did you know that most of the Punjabi taxi drivers in New York are from Jalandhar? Radio Open Source has a great interview with Biju Mathew, an Indian taxi organizer in New York. He has written a book called Taxi! Cabs and Capitalism in New York City, which you can get here.

This interview, I'm afraid, is much more interesting than the interview I was on last week. The most interesting part is actually not the cultural niceties (Jalandhar and so on), but the economic issues. Because of the changing dynamics of the New York economy as well as the taxi/medallion system itself, it's no longer very common for drivers to use driving a cab as a way to save money so they can get into other kinds of work.

You can listen to the Audio stream or download the MP3 for your Ipod here. In addition to Mathew, they have some interesting taxi drivers on the phone, including a dude from Ghana, a Pakistani, and some others.