I’m having one of those “never imagined I’d live to see the day” moments. The day when a taxi charges less than an autorickshaw in Bengaluru. This isn’t news to most of you, who have been liberally using local cabs (around thrice a week, according to a recent survey) since last year, but I’m an old stick-in-the-mud who has to be dragged kicking and screaming towards any new trend. As you may know by now, I am a confirmed BMTC commuter, frequent metro user and infrequent auto passenger. Taxis? Not my scene, man, as the hippies used to say. But I’m slowly warming to the idea that instead of striding up and down in pursuit of a willing three-wheeler after a late-night event, I could summon an extra wheel with a simple phone call. Well, not quite so simple, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
At this point, Mumbaikars and Kolkatans, for whom taxis have always been an affordable option, are eyeing me with a superior air. I shall ignore them. Where I grew up, the black-and-yellow was sighted rarely, and one associated it with visiting relatives who would pull up at your front gate during summer vacations and unload cumbersome suitcases from the dickey. In Bangalore, too, the average citizen considered it a luxury. In the 1980s these beat-up Fiats and Ambassadors with damaged or missing meters would lie in wait for those who emerged from the old airport terminal and take them for a ride both literally and metaphorically. It was when the newer models of our first indigenous car rolled out that the taxi changed colour. I don’t know who picked white but I suppose it was inspired by the official cars of government babus. Initially there were only individual operators who ran travel agencies and small fleets, and whose numbers you got off cheap flyers illegally inserted into your newspaper. If you had an early morning bus or train to catch, or an assignment in an outlying area, you called the previous night to book a taxi and paid according to an arbitrarily devised rate chart. The driver would press his visiting card on you and urge you to call him directly next time.
I recall, around six or seven years ago, a couple of friends informing me of this venture called Easy Auto that had just been launched in Bangalore. They ran a restaurant and used autos every day to transport fresh produce, so the scheme appeared to be tailor-made for them. The driver, who was garbed in a spiffy uniform, gave them a brochure with a list of phone numbers (including his personal number and a ‘helpline’) and took Rs. 100 from them as ‘registration fee’. For just Rs. 3 above the meter fare, he said, he would pick them up whenever they needed him. Bright and early the next morning my friends started calling the numbers one by one to find that they were either engaged or not reachable. The driver’s personal phone kept ringing but nobody answered. As my friends were griping about their experience to me they added a crucial detail: only 150 autos had registered with Easy Auto. If each driver went around distributing brochures, demand would of course far outstrip supply. Don’t worry, I told my friends, you can wait until more autos sign up and then you can travel in style — in an auto that functions like a taxi.
Today, you have a taxi that functions like an auto. But the cheap ride comes with a rider: the waiting might wear you down. Saturday nights are impossible, and on most evenings the cheapest company is hardest to get through to, even if you’ve downloaded their App. “Abracadabra, grab a cab” is not how it works. Allow me to demonstrate with a recent example. (For easy reading, I have titled the cab companies C-1 and C-2, numbered the drivers in order of appearance, and omitted the barrage of messages that accompanied the transactions.) We logged onto the C-1 site and waited. Five minutes later, D-1 confirmed, but called after a while to announce that he’d had a breakdown. We cancelled the C-1 booking and got through to C-2. While we were waiting for D-1 from C-2, we were beeped by D-2 from C-1 saying he was ready and willing. But we’ve already cancelled C-1, we told him. Next, C2D1 called to say he was stuck in traffic, and he would get D-2 to take on the job. And this was on a weekday, mind you. By the time C2D2 arrived we were on the pavement outside, stamping our feet and cursing him each time an empty auto whizzed by.
The driver, who felt he owed us an explanation for our wasted hour, let us in on a trade secret. Drivers get a commission only if they make more than 10 trips a day, and — get this — even cancellations count as ‘trips’. The trick is to accept only short trips while simultaneously cancelling as many bookings as possible, in order to achieve the magic number.
“We need a taxi only when we have to go a long distance,” I said irately. “If it’s a short trip we can just take an auto, no?” But answer came there none.
