New Delhi: The people who depend on public transport within city limits never had it so good. In the last ten years there has been an explosion of taxi services offering innovative services at affordable prices all over India.
These hi-tech taxi services (known as cabs) have saved the people from filthy, battered, arrogant, unreliable and expensive old taxi mafia in all major cities.
India’s taxi revolution started with the arrival of cabs like Meru, Easy Cab, Mega Cab and KSTDC among others in the last ten years. These taxis are fitted with the GPS, passengers can pay by cards and get a printed receipt. They have made the once dreaded journey a pleasant experience.
To cash in on the taxi boom in India, the App based cab services like Uber, Ola, TaxiforSure etc also launched their operations across Indian cities in the last two-three years. These taxis are cheaper than even auto-rickshaws and can be easily booked via an App. These taxis have taken away a large chunk of passengers from services like Meru.
However, these foreign funded neo hi-tech taxi services are not free from trouble. They often make news for the wrong reasons. Their style of operation is secretive and raises several valid questions over the security of passengers.
In last winter, a Delhi girl was raped by an Uber taxi driver in the middle of night. That horrific incident had led to a furore forcing several states to ban App based taxi services like Uber and Ola. But, that did not deter these taxi companies from continue their operations illegally.
In the last one month, two incidents of these App based taxi drivers misbehaving with their female passengers have been reported from Bengaluru. In both cases, the drivers have been arrested by the police.
The latest incident of a TaxiforSure driver masturbating while driving a female passenger from Saket in New Delhi to neighbouring suburb of Faridabad has once again brought the focus back on these taxi services and the dangers of allowing them to function without proper safety measures in place.
After the horrific rape incident of last Winter, the App based taxi services were banned in several states. The investors cried that it was a knee-jerk reaction and wanted the government not to ban the services.
According to a report in Firstpost, Ola Cabs had recently received $210 million investments from Japan's SoftBank. According to a report in The Times of India, investors have pumped in $300 million between Ola and TaxiForSure alone. San Fransisco-based Uber, which has been banned across various cities and countries, was valued at about $40 billion when it recently raised $1.2 billion in funding.
In last March the TaxiforSure which is now in the news for a masturbating driver was reportedly bought by Ola for over Rs 1200 Crores. The deal is yet to be completed.
Keeping the use and reach of these new age cab services, the government should come out with proper safety guidelines without affecting the services. A few criminal drivers should not be allowed to spoil a very useful public transport service. At the same time, security and safety of passengers are above all commercial interests.
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