For many people who have been paying attention, Uber got into India and was revolutionising the Taxi Industry here in a deep way.
Here is the thing? My place is 3 Km from the hospital in Rural India. I get a bus, lifts and cycle to work. Sometimes (like today) I end up taking an auto rickshaw which is the equivalent of a New York Yellow Cab. These things are (also yellow) everywhere but they hold a monopoly over pick up rides.
This means they don’t have to utilise a meter. They can charge whatever they feel like and if you are shit out of luck, you have to pay them. I pay around Rs. 160 a day if I have to take them. Not a large amount of money if you are converting from pounds but a sizeable amount if you live in India. To break that habit, I purchased a bicycle figuring the 4000 rupee outlay would save me money in the long term. It has. The price of showing up to work sweaty is a small one though but “India is hot and I sweat at work anyways, what’s sweating 15 minutes before I get to work going to do to me?
But along comes Uber. A non union taxi service which gave back the power of the taxi to the consumer. What we began to see was a gradual erosion of the monopoly. While I like Unions, I think they should work towards the benefit of the service rather than simply creating a monopoly of shitty quality like in India.
But when an Uber driver raped an Indian woman? The government of Delhi banned the service, blaming it for hiding rapists. And I disagree. I was skeptical so I did some poking around the claim.
To take a taxi or an auto is defeat. It is accepting that you have to place your life in the merciless and unknown hands of auto drivers. It’s a shocking change from the cabs of the UK. There a taxi driver is a service and there are standards and ethics to stick to. While he may engage me in banter, the driver has a pride in delivery. Sure there are some places where taxi drivers who ruled the system were taking advantage of people but that is nothing compared to India.
If the auto used it’s meter, my journey would be a paltry 60 Rupees. I pay more than double for the auto which gets me to my room a mere 5 minutes faster than my bicycle. If we exclude waiting times? My cycle is the same speed. I know. It’s a shocking service (and I kind of cycle at a pretty brisk pace by Indian standards).
But along came Uber. It’s not so big in Chennai but I have been to other cities where I used it. Uber was a godsend. It was a cheap, reliable and above all SAFE service. There was a lot more accountability within the system. I have had drivers here shake me down for more cash before and I have long taken to carrying exact change (People don’t steal smart phones, I can lock mine remotely and have it traced every time it’s turned on. This has made smart phone theft rarer) and no card so my shake down at best will cost me a few rupees more than the actual ride. But yes, I know that every damn time I step into an auto I am being robbed.
Uber has been a greater friend to the urban woman in India than the autos or the government. Women embraced the app wholesale because it allowed feedback. Drivers got graded, complimented and complained about for all to see. This encouraged drivers to take special care in improving the service while cutting out the much cheaper to operate autos. No seriously. It’s cheaper for me to travel to my room via an Uber car with an air conditioner and a comfortable seat than cam myself into the back of an auto and I know I am not going to get ripped off.
And then there are the drivers. The quality was much better, with female co-workers one was sure you could send them home with this service because not only did they know how much they were going to pay (cause Taxi and Autos shake down women more successfully) but also because there was less creepiness. Creepy drivers who stared at their female guests got reported. The judgemental gaze is death to an Uber Driver in India. And here we saw one more issue.
Many Indians who are middle class hire a driver. I didn’t understand why until I realised that most people who work in middle class professions have cars and long work days. It’s simpler to hire a driver than actually drive. Doctors for example work long hours so don’t like driving through India’s hectic traffic and figure that they can easily pay someone money to drive them to and from work. The down side is that a lot of these guys gossip and this can end up creating problems such as “hey my employee is out all day” kind of conversation that often leads to houses being broken into.
And finally there is the issue of safety. There is absolutely zero safety and accountability when it comes to auto drivers. Most families will have a “known” auto. One they regularly use or a stand where they regularly go. It’s in these auto drivers interest to not cheat or take advantage of the locals because they would be found out easily. A random auto though? Firstly? anyone can drive an auto. They may be registered to a driver but the auto may have more than one driver who actually operates it. Hell? The person who owns it may not be the one driving it in the first place.
Rapes in autos and taxis are a terrible thing and they do occur. They occur a lot. Primarily cause the auto driver has the advantage of little to no traceability. It’s an auto, it looks like any other auto. Hell? Remember the Sherlock episode discussing a serial killer who used a London Black Cab? It’s the same principle. No one would notice one and no one would note the number even.
In the end? Uber’s accountability helped catch this rapist. The fact was that the entire journey was logged enabling the woman to be able to track her assailant. The second point was that Uber itself was able to trace it’s driver and at least put the police on the right path to finding him.
What we should criticise is Uber’s lack of a physical presence to help police with the enquiries. I fear that the mere act of not being aware of the crime has doomed Uber’s attempts in India. I know for a fact that Uber has attempted to make sure it’s drivers meet a minimum standard of quality. However? The problem in India is how pointless that really is.
A young woman in Delhi was allegedly raped by an Uber Driver. The problem was that Police couldn’t figure out how to contact a human from Uber. Police literally had to download the app and call a car and then take hours to find a representative in person. In this way? I think Uber has to realise that India despite being a technological powerhouse is in itself not one. It makes the solutions for our techno-utopias in the west. People often don’t realise that my 1 MBps internet connection is often considered fast and Indians still deal with 7 GB download limits. In short? India is only a technological paradise in the brochure, the reality is Internet isn’t reliable, open or easily accessible in many parts of India. Or cheap.
So Uber NEEDS a physical presence here. Just some guy on the ground who can answer phones when something goes wrong. Uber’s western model cannot do anything in India, not until India really takes some steps to breaking the habit of “bad connectivity”.
Secondly? There is no such thing as quality control in India. The guy you hire could well be a serial rapist for all you know. Police Certificates aren’t worth anything. Uber requires it’s local taxi affiliates to have background checks. No problem right? Problem is? This man PASSED the test. The man who allegedly raped this woman in an Uber Cab PASSED the test. The test firstly has two problems.
1. It requires the person to have been caught before and for this to not be his first offence. In other words? If you aren’t charged with rape you won’t ever be tagged by a police system as being a rapist.
2. In India, the Police are corrupt. Taking Bribes is all part of the normal day of a Police Station and many of these certificates are issued under bribe.
India does not have a Criminal Records Bureau like the UK. Instead a largely meaningless certificate is issued by the police. You can get one around me for around $5. I know. I checked with a copper. Many drivers have no option but to pay for this not because they have any criminal records but because the effort to get it legitimately is so high that you may as well fork over the Rs. 500 for the certificate and get on with your life rather than burn a week queueing for pointless things. It took me nearly a whole day to get my license in India because of all the pointless queuing and kowtowing to get things done. The bureaucracy and India encourage petty and pointless power struggles and a sort of napoleon complex in workers with any power that makes a system like this so easy to corrupt. There is absolutely little to no oversight and I found out that a driving exam in India consists of driving 30 metres in a straight line. All you need to show is being able to drive a car 30 metres, change from first to second and then stop. To drive a scooter or a motor cycle? Do a figure of eight. No really. Otherwise it is too much work. And it shows. India’s roads are positively lethal.
So Uber’s quality control is meaningless. Not only is the person who drives their cars out here tested on their driving skills in less than a minute but their security and background checks don’t mean a thing.
Why? The man who raped this woman turned out to have been acquitted of rape before and was bailed out for another before this. He had a forged certificate. The police claim it was forged. Had it been genuine, no one would have batted an eye lash.
I completely disagree with the ban on Uber. The government is complicit in this crime. I joke that Kafka would have changed his tune about Prague had he visited India. Delhi’s Transport Department’s ban on Uber and it’s clones. The joke is? There is no way to enforce that ban either. Uber cabs are still plying Delhi on the sly.
So who to blame? Well? We should realise that this sort of problem would not occur if corruption within the Government and the Police wasn’t so rampant. To claim otherwise is like trying to claim that Elephants aren’t big and grey. It’s clear to anyone in India that the government is corrupt and the police are ineffective and often part of the problem. What Uber is? Uber is accountability. Had this driver been from any other cab company or an auto driver he would have never been caught.
Uber has shown more responsibility in trying to put the rapist behind bars than the police who literally had no tools to guarantee that an employee has no prior crimes such as rape. While it’s major fault was “not having an actual physical presence” that pales in comparison to the fact that there are people issuing fake certificates of quality and that the police are complicit in it. In effect Uber cannot guarantee the safety of it’s users. What it can guarantee is the accountability of it’s drivers.
And that is a strong reason to not ban Uber and instead try to see how the model can improve rather than defending the status quo monopoly of unaccountable drivers who get away with crimes every single day because nothing can be done. The fact is the only reason we are blaming Uber is because they helped catch him. Had he been from any other taxi company they would have just made loud noises that were ineffective.
In banning Uber, the Delhi Government is shifting the blame for it’s own problems onto a private sector corporation.