The tonga is a two-wheeled horse cart with a rear-facing bench, the standard urban transport of Punjab from the nineteenth century until the auto-rickshaw took it in the 1970s and 1980s.
Amritsar's tongas ran between the station and the Golden Temple for a century. Fazilka kept its longest and is known across Punjab for that.
Tonga horses were kept by families who did nothing else, in stables at the edge of town, and a good tonga horse was a matter of local reputation.
The trade was displaced fast and the men in it had no other skill and no transferable licence.
The word survives in Punjabi speech for a small hired vehicle and most people using it have never been in one.
The displacement was by the auto rickshaw and the cycle rickshaw rather than by the car, and it happened between about 1980 and 2005 in most Punjabi towns. Municipal licences were withdrawn or allowed to lapse and the stands were reassigned.
The horses were the main asset of the families that kept them and the main expense. When the trade ended the horses were sold or let go, and that part of the story is documented nowhere.
Fazilka keeps a small number running as a heritage attraction, maintained deliberately rather than commercially. Elsewhere the stands are gone and the stables have been built over.