17 Apr 2021  |   04:04am IST

Sorry the taxi lobby and their political patrons: You don’t get what Goa needs

Sorry the taxi lobby and their political patrons: You don’t get what Goa needs

Sujay Gupta

It’s a universe of victimisation, hate and otherisation. It’s a cosmos of bickering. And muscle-flexing. And for a change, we are not talking of an alpha male political party but a “professional” group of ‘businessmen’ who want an absolute unregulated monopoly, with their own rules, with a singular motto of “my way or the highway”. Currently even this motto has ironic connotations. The tourists who come to Goa have been literally left on the highway as the taxi lobby, dipped in politics and fuelled by politicians, has gone on an indefinite strike. The reasons are piquant. They want a legally established app-based service out. On what grounds? Simply a big fat whim that GoaMiles, the app-based taxi service, is taking away their livelihood and causing them a great injustice.

Most of us have friends and relatives who need a fully functional and comfortable cab hire system, which is organised, regularised, reasonable and professional as a service provider. And it’s a no brainer to conclude that the existing universe of tourist taxi drivers, purely based on empirical evidence, is anything but that.

This is the constituency of the convinced.

What is needed is to drive home yet again that the claims and demands of the other constituency, the taxi lobby, are beyond unjustified. They are bizarre, myopic and against real Goan interests. And the constant threat and now execution of the threat to hold Goa to ransom needs to be dealt with administratively and legally.

The bottom-line is this. They are seemingly in line to face a few litigations of contempt of court directives by not taking the first step towards regularisation   install meters. For close to two years, the taxi lobby with equally plaint local politicians has held out against the installation of meters through a series of uncalled for untruthful excuses to hold out against installing digital meters.

Their actions clearly fall within the realm of monopolistic practices and against fair trade but that, for many Goan politicians and the taxi lobby, of course, is another universe altogether. The truth is that it is not. 

Sadly, the Goan taxi owners, supposed to be the first ambassadors of tourism have been swimming in the universe of myths, half-truths and plain lies.


Let’s bust them.

1 GoaMiles (or any other taxi service including private cars) takes away livelihoods

Myth buster: Since when did we agree that local tourist taxi drivers will have a monopoly over the taxi service space in Goa? For sure they should be important players as Goa is a tourist State and locals should be stakeholders in all aspects of tourism. Inherent to this loss of livelihood theme is another myth that has been propagated. That app-based taxi services are “non-Goan’. Now without even asking the obvious question, which angers the taxi lobby, “aren’t Goans employed out of Goa”, no app-based taxi service excludes Goans. In fact, the government has always maintained that the taxi owners can easily join and become a part of an app-based ecosystem and register their cabs with them, including GoaMiles. GoaMiles, for argument's sake, will become “Goan” from “Non-Goan” when Goan taxi drivers decide to join the app-based eco-system. And this can include Goa Miles, Ola, Uber or any other local app-based system that they devise.


2 There is no standardisation of rates and even the rates decided by the government are too low

Myth buster:  There are fixed rates for taxis booked at the airport for drops. And while there are rates for another point to point places, the passenger is basically at the mercy of the taxi owner who can ask for Rs 800 from Panjim to the Kadamba plateau.


3 There should be no GoaMiles counter at the airport

Myth buster: Shockingly from Mauvin Godinho to Michael Lobo to other senior leaders, all have paid lip service to this illegal and unfair demand. Why just GoaMiles? There cannot be a system where any player conforming to the rules of business and which allows everyone in Goa (in this case) to join the business without excluding anyone, is forced to be out. Every taxi owner can run his own taxi service with a digital meter or join an app-based network. All players should have counters at the airport so that those who are unable to connect through an app or are more comfortable booking through the counter have a choice. A local taxi owner has no right to deny the public that choice.


4 Digital meters are faulty and there is not enough production

Myth buster: This has been a red flag flown for too long and is not based on any evidence. The company producing the digital meters has sufficient stock. The government has been far too lenient because of the political strength of the taxi lobby and had the audacity to ignore court orders


5 This is for the politicians. The tourism minister Babu Ajgaonkar in a bout of short sightedness said that if the taxi lobby had installed digital meters, there was no question of Goa Miles coming in.

Myth buster: This is nothing but skewing the narrative badly. At the very least the Tourism Minister of Goa should be aware that the installation of digital meters is non-negotiable as well as Court directed and not conditional to an app-based service being out of the State. An app-based service should and will be in Goa because that is a fair practice and any violation can be acted upon by the Competition Commission, duly formed for this purpose.

The tragedy is that even our politicians are not aware of a larger universe of mandates and practices that even Goa is governed by.

There should be no further negotiation and talks. The taxi lobby should first fall in line and cooperate to get digital meters installed and join the mainstream of healthy competition with full freedom to join the app-based universe. They should simultaneously realise that they cannot push this narrative by using the livelihood card and riding piggyback on politicians who need their votes.

They are truly sons of the soil. But their acts must justify their love for their soil. At this moment and for years now, that hasn’t been the case.

Sujay Gupta is the Consulting Editor Herald Publications and tweets @sujaygupta0832


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