Crossing the Blueline

The sad sight of buses packed way beyond their passenger carrying capacity and the awful stories of commuters geting seriously injured while trying to get on board are not just a Delhi reality, even though it’s the Capital that is playing host to these demonstrations of terrible failures in public policy. The failure is nation-wide. Every major city has a couple of horror stories. And they have been victims to more than a couple of policy ad hocisms. Take Delhi again. ‘Killer’ Blueline buses have captured a horrified public’s imagination. So politicians are proposing invoking ESMA, importing buses from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and the running of more buses by the organisationally and financially hamstrung state operator, the DTC. But there’s no reason to think that Bluelines make the case for privately-run mass transport systems unviable. Let’s put it this way: autos (called TSRs in the Capital, to the justified perplexity of those who visit Delhi) and cabs are privately-run everywhere. Why not buses? The trick is to arrive at the right form of privatisation.

The Motor Vehicles Act doesn’t allow issuing licences to large fleet operators, that is, companies that can run a transport service. That is precisely why Delhi’s 3,000 Blueline buses are essentially 3,000 individually-owned enterprises. Small is not beautiful here. The nature of the business is such that owners have no incentive to have properly trained drivers. But incentives are loaded in favour of overspeeding, drivers working far longer hours than recommended and other dangerous practices because these owners, unlike a big private transport corporation, don’t have to worry about their business reputations. Kolkata’s notoriously rickety private buses — many of them still resemble tin boxes — also operate on this business model. In other cities, lumbering public carriers do the job of ferrying people and they do it very badly.

But policymakers have a strange problem about corporatised large fleet operators. Large fleet cab operators have only recently been allowed. One can ask why the government doesn’t restrict civil aviation licences to only individuals owning aircraft, not corporations flying a fleet? The answer is there’ll be absolute chaos.There’s absolute chaos in the public transport system — the two metros in Delhi and Kolkata being the exceptions — and nothing will change until India’s policymakers understand that in public transport, big plus private means safe and viable.