India Road Transport Service Efficiency Study

When sectors such as airline, telecom, banking, insurance, etc were opened out also, similar fears were expressed. And, since many things had not been properly thought through, there indeed were a lot of hiccups, initially. Eventually, the processes matured, and everyone is better off for it all today.

As such, while agreeing with you fully that a proper regulatory regime needs to be in place, we cannot go on perfecting it till kingdom come before deciding to get one's feet wet. We start with what we have, which in itself is quite a lot, and then go on building on it based on hands-on experience.

Experiences in other sectors have shown us the way out. However, for sceptics and status-quoists, nothing will ever be enough! It is like Pakistan government asking for credible proof of involvement of its people in the terror acts in India.

Muralidhar Rao

Silkboard avare'

I sincerely believe you all are just pussy-footing the issue, and thereby providing enough excuses and alibi's for perpetuation of these government monopolies.

Let's just take the example of Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram (Tvm). My brother and his wife, both grew up in Kochi, and did their architecture together at the Engineering College in Tvm. They had been using public bus transport services extensively in both the cities, and even though they travel in cars these days, they are fully aware of all aspects pertaining to the matter, particularly with my brother recently being appointed by the Govt of Kerala as the Chairman, Technical Advisory Group, Urban Planning.

Kochi city is almost totally served by private players in the public bus transport services arena, whereas in the case of Tvm, it is just the opposite. And, as a result, there is a world of difference in the quality of services available in the two cities. In the case of Kochi services, aspects such as frequency, connectivity, dependability, cleanliness, etc are extremely good, compared to the Tvm services. The only aspect where they score poorly is with regard to over-speeding. But, if you look at it, this over-speeding is resulting from competition to grab as much custom as possible, in order to sustain their operations even at the irrational and uneconomical fare levels fixed by some babu's. And, the simple fact of the matter is that if the grip of this license-permit regime is relaxed a bit in these aspects, everything will fall in place, and you'll have the best of services, solving in its wake all the traffic problems of the city.

Where the tightening is required is in policing against over-speeding, over-loading, etc, which cannot happen today, since under the conditions prevailing, it is only the police and such government officials who can 'manage' the system, and therefore own the operations. A TVS will not want to touch this business even with a barge pole, though the name TVS itself came into reckoning through in this business.

Kochi is the commercial capital of Kerala, with a population of 6 lakhs, about double that of Tvm. And, for the level of activity in the city, the usage of motorised two-wheelers is comparatively low, largely because of the dependable bus services.

The situation is not too different in our own Mangalore.

And, in the only aspect that the private operators fare poorly, namely over-speeding, our own BMTC (and Tvm's government bus operators) is not some shining beacon of virtue either. Besides, whereas in Kochi and Mangalore, this is resulting out of economic compulsions, in the case of BMTC, it is resulting out of the plain arrogance of its drivers.

My submission, as such, is that if we campaign for entry of the private sector into these services, the rest of it will fall in place automatically, since a TVS will make that a pre-condition. And, the cange can be brought about by the stroke of a pen. No more grand fly-overs, TTMCs, dedicated lanes, chopping-off of trees, and related scams. In fact, not a single paisa to be spent by the government.    

Muralidhar Rao