The other day, when I was
walking along a road in Bangalore, an auto guy drove ahead and stopped just
infront of me blocking me and asked for a ride. The moment I told him the
place, he replied with a weird smile “Sir,
250 rupees, baittiye (meaning: 250 rupees, shall sit inside?)”. Knowing the place exactly (not
more than 1 mile), I said a big NO!!! and kept walking. He again came and
told “Sir, 200 rupees, chalega (Rs 200,
OK?)” again I said No. He then desperately asked, “Aap
bathayiye, kitna dega? (meaning: Tell me how much can you give then?)”, and I said “meter charge” (meter is common in Indian auto-rickshaws to track the distance covered and shows the corresponding final amount every passenger needs to give for the entire journey). I know the place is nearby,
having hardly any traffic signals in between, with comparatively fewer traffic, this cant be Rs. 250.
I barely gave any attention when he opened his box of explanations for 250
rupees.
I am just one person
among the public who has been exploited by the auto-drivers in Bangalore. Asking almost 20
times the actual price (which doesn't happen even in cocaine/heroine market) that needs to be curbed immediately inorder to protect the mass-exploitation by the rickshaw drivers. While I was in
a pursuit of the inside-outs of this auto rickshaw-industry, interestingly I
dig out some facts (don’t know whether this is completely true or not) inside a
quarter of 2 months.
Basically two factors,
the auto-drivers are looking for; one is the skin-tone and the other is the
language. If they come to know that one passenger doesn’t know Kannada (an Indian regional language), then auto-drivers always quarrel for the auto-fare with him/her in Kannada only. Some
will fight back with the drivers, while some others don’t.
I met one auto driver
in Bangalore who has been the rickshaw driver for the past 25 years. He justifies
all the criticisms, “Bangalore has
changed a lot; a lot of bus services have started, new routes designed, many
flyovers erected, introduction of Bangalore metro, and above all, more than 70%
of the passengers are IT people who are either having their own company cab
service or are comfortable with the Volvo bus services. So a normal auto driver
hardly gets 5-7 rides a day for which he has to travel 7-10kms (at an
average) to get one passenger.” He remembers, he even travelled more than 20kms without getting any single passenger. So this “high-price” can be used to compensate the operating expenses.
Have you slightly got
convinced by his comments? Though we know it is exactly not the same situation for the
drivers in other metros like Mumbai, Delhi (where taxi-meter would be “on-condition” for
any ride), but we can somehow compare both cities to an extent. So if the drivers of Mumbai are able to compensate their expenses despite following the “meter
charge” rule irrespective of the kind of passengers that get in, it is pretty
clear that the above comments of our fellow driver is a big LIE. Many say this high
price is because of the huge liquidity of the “IT-engineers” who is never a
significant population in other metros which emphasizes the fact that it is
the "passengers" who ignited such a culture in Bangalore and never the auto
drivers. Moreover since it is meter charge in Mumbai suburbs, public prefers auto-rickshaws
very often. So there may never arise a waiting period of travelling 7-10kms to get one passenger which was that Bangalore driver’s justification.
No matter who the
culprit is, the authorities should take a proactive action inorder to avoid a “certain-consequence”
in the near future. Bangalore already witnessed some odd protests from the public regarding the huge fares. There should be a benchmark or upper limit for
the price for a particular distance and the authorities should release ordinance or circulars, mentioning the rules and fares so that the public will never
get exploited. Infact “share-auto” system is not very common in Bangalore just as in
other metros like Chennai, Mumbai etc. which can also be implemented or promoted.
One final note:
Petrol wastage
But anyways, Due to this continuous
running by the auto drivers in Bangalore in pursuit of a passenger, they might never count how much petrol has been wasted. When a private analytics firm
conducted a survey on petrol wastage by rickshaws in 2010, Bangalore was on 2nd position by wasting 0.25 l/per driver/ per hour. Reports suggests there are 1,50,000 rickshaws in Bangalore. Just imagine, these many rickshaws waste almost 9,00,000 ltrs of petrol everyday from Bangalore itself (this petrol wastage from rickshaws is nothing but 20 billion INR every year when simulate into indian currency). This huge petrol wastage rings a buzzer-alarm in a heavily oil consumed
country like India.
