Hardlook: Road ahead for 45-year-old body

The AAP government has been promising 1,000 new buses for Delhi this year. With the plan to procure buses being dropped, the government has changed strategy, said a DTC official. “The government has planned that we will not get into the hassle of buying buses at all. We will hire 10 clusters of 100 private buses each under the kilometre scheme like we did during the odd-even run,” the official added.

The DTC, earlier, ran Blueline private buses on hire under the kilometre scheme. However, the set-up was scrapped amid high rate of crime and allegations of corruption. Yet, this seems the fastest possible method for adding new buses, said officials.

The DTC is also making do with a stopgap arrangement of contractual staff. “These contractual employees are fewer than the required strength. There has been a freeze on hiring for the last decade. The government does not want to hire regular employees and pay them high wages along with statutory benefits. And people have been retiring in droves every year. So, we have been hiring staff on contract,” said a senior DTC official.

Contractual workers are uncertain about getting work daily on a regular basis and many keep away on ordinary days. And, they are not held accountable, unlike the regular employees on DTC payroll. On days when absenteeism on the part of the regular drivers is high, DTC finds itself short of staff and fewer buses leave depots. Last year, Transport Minister Gopal Rai paid Rajghat depot a surprise visit and found 57 buses out of the 170 had not left.

Rai, who is also the Labour Minister, told The Indian Express, “We are looking into the issue of regularising contractual workers and filling government posts with regular workers. But this is not in particular for the DTC. It is a policy being gradually implemented for all government departments.”

DTC insiders feel the need for sweeping changes to revitalise the 45-year-old corporation “The odd-even measure was the biggest for the DTC after the Commonwealth Games,” said a senior officer.

The Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC) has been looking at improving public transport. DDC vice-chairman Ashish Khetan said, “We have told the SC about long-term measure. The PWD is working on it.” He added, “Short-term measures would be bringing more buses, constructing more depots. I hope we see at least 800 new buses by July… It is my belief and that of DDC that the transport department needs to be reformed. So, some monopolistic and restrictive interpretations of law need to go in favour of a more liberal and tactical interpretation.”

For instance, the odd-even policy brought to the fore confusion over contract carriage permits and stage carriage permits. Khetan blames this for many buses not attaching themselves to the DTC for the odd-even run.

At present, all private buses ferry people on the contract carriage permit. Stage carriage permits can be given only to cluster buses or other such vehicles only under the DTC or a government nodal body to prevent competition and road safety hazards. “The High Court barred issuing of stage carriage permits to private players when the Blueline services came under fire for the growing number of accidents and other related problems,” said a DTC officer.

For Khetan, it is a time of innovation. “When we did several rounds of consultations, we found there are bus aggregating IT app-based companies… their scale of operation is quite small now because of the ambiguity over whether they are allowed to do so under the existing regime. We have sent a detailed policy recommendation that IT app-based bus aggregation should be allowed… The government has to act as an enabler…”