Gig workers postpone auto, cab strike after commuters' harrowing experience
Keshav Kshirsagar, the president of the front, said, "We have a meeting on Tuesday with senior officials of the state transport department. If its decisions don't meet our expectations, the strike will resume."
Several commuters had a harrowing experience on roads on Friday and in the early hours of Saturday. Cabs and autos were hard to come by. The fortunate ones getting vehicles had to fork out double the average fare.
Worse, a few got a taste of unruly drivers' misbehaviour.
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Pratik Chhoriyaan, an IT professional, landed in Pune in the early hours of Saturday. "People were stranded at Aeromall's first and second floor outside the Pune airport because of the strike. Some auto and cab drivers on duty demanded over Rs1,000 for an 8km distance."
Aviral Bhatnagar, an investor, wrote on X, "Pune's having Ola/Uber/Rapido cab drivers' strike to raise prices.
What earlier cost Rs350 now costs Rs700. One asked me to pay Rs1,000 instead of Rs300. In the quest for maximising profits, cab drivers are killing the golden goose of cab aggregators."
Dinesh Tiwari, a resident of Wanowrie, struggled to find a cab to go to his office. "My car went for servicing two days ago, and it has been a big challenge finding a cab or an auto. I have been paying Rs300-400 to travel a short distance of 7km."
Anvesh Kulkarni, a resident of Hadapsar, tried to book a cab multiple times on Saturday morning but failed. "I had to take my family to Koregaon Park for a function. We tried booking autorickshaws and cabs for an hour, but failed. Finally, I called up an autorickshaw driver known to us. He dropped us for Rs450," he said.
Dilip Sonawane, a cab driver on these aggregators since 2015, said, "We are demanding the updated fares the RTO has allowed us to charge.
Since the same fares are not showing up on the app, customers do not want to pay the revised amount. Most customers say they will pay the new rates if these reflect on the app. Ola, Uber and Rapido are refusing to update the rates. This is causing major confusion among commuters."
Prakash Rajguru, the president of LV Antaral Autorickshaw Sanghatana, who operates prepaid autorickshaws from the Pune airport, said their business revived in the past two days after months of stalemate.
"The strike left flyers with no option but to come to us. We have done brisk business. Each of us made multiple trips. We charged fares as per the RTA-approved pre-paid rates. Flyers with more luggage hired two or even three autorickshaws because they didn't have a choice," Rajguru said.
Another prepaid auto driver talked about an incident in the early morning hours. "A passenger negotiating with an auto driver was stunned because he was asked for a fare of Rs2,000 for going to Hinjewadi-phase-1. When I saw him moving towards the AeroMall, I requested him to book a ride with us from the counter. He did that. We gave him a receipt of Rs525, and a colleague of mine took him to his destination," he said.
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She has six children — three daughters and three sons — and all of them are married. She says she has been left alone to repay the loans she borrowed for their weddings and for other expenses. 'The recovery agent took away everything I had — a table, a chair, my bed, the cooker, the gas cylinder, and even my supply of wheat for the year. He stripped my house empty.' When asked if she reported the incident to the police, she stares blankly. 'How can we?' she murmurs. The women say at least 20-25 families in their village alone have fled fearing recovery agents. As they start counting and naming the families, many of them turn towards Pawan Devi. Pawan took loans from five microfinance institutions for her son's wedding, but she has been unable to repay the amount. Pawan and her family fled the village, spent more than a year in Punjab, and returned only last week. Pawan cannot recall the name of the village where she and her family stayed. 'Barring the biting cold, it was better there,' she says. 'The landlord didn't charge us for electricity or water. There were clean toilets. And we had a regular income working in the fields.' Pawan says what she cherished the most about her stay in Punjab was the absence of recovery agents. But the agents she dreads are now back at her doorstep. 'They come every other day. Sometimes they stand outside for hours. Sometimes they enter the house and start rifling through our papers. The other day, they took away my son's Aadhaar card,' she says. Around 30 kilometres away at Navtol village in Bhawanipur panchayat of Darbhanga district, Mahesh Kumar Roy, who says he is a recovery agent with Muthoot FinCorp, is on his daily rounds of the village. Mahesh, who hails from Darbhanga, goes from house to house on his motorcycle. He pulls out the sheaves of papers rolled up between his motorcycle handles and runs his finger along the names. 'Since 2022, when I joined the company, I have been given 1,100 households to track. At least 450 families who defaulted on their loans have disappeared. I make regular rounds, but all I see is locked homes,' he says. Mahesh adds that people 'disappear only after they have paid 15-16 installments' and 'after we have managed to recover at least 60% of the principal amount.' Mahesh prides himself as a 'decent' agent. Aware of the reputation that recovery agents have, he looks at the crowd gathered around him and asks them whether he is intimidating or threatening. They all say 'no'. Rules on paper The RBI issued exhaustive guidelines in 2022 collating the piecemeal directives it had issued earlier. It said that the lenders must 'provide the flexibility of repayment periodicity on microfinance loans as per borrowers' requirement'. That is, the repayment period of the loan must be moulded to the requirements of the borrowers, rather than the needs of the lender. To ensure that microfinance loans do not unduly burden the borrowers, the RBI directions also include a provision that says each regulated lender must ensure that the monthly repayment burden of a household should not exceed 50% of the monthly income of that household. RBI also has a separate set of guidelines for recovery agents. It defined what would be deemed as harsh methods, such as use of threatening or abusive language, persistently calling the borrower and/or calling the borrower before 9:00 a.m. and after 6:00 p.m., harassing relatives, friends, or co-workers of the borrower, publishing the name of borrowers, the use or threat of use of violence or other similar means to harm the borrower or borrower's family/assets/reputation, or misleading the borrower about the extent of the debt or the consequences of non-repayment. However, the regulations on the interest to be charged on these loans simply say that the interest rates and other charges and fees on microfinance loans 'should not be usurious', and that the RBI would scrutinise this aspect of the loans. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Assam have specific regulations for microfinance. Several other States such as Kerala, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh have laws regulating money lenders, which also include microfinance institutions. Assembly elections are scheduled in Bihar in October, but there is no political thrust in the State on bringing in any regulatory mechanism in this regard. Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, U.S., says it is not surprising that the RBI guidelines for microfinance institutions are not being implemented since there is often a lack of implementation of State policy. She also says there are fundamental flaws in the microfinancing model. 'While it makes credit accessible for the poor, there is high interest and lack of monitoring of how repayment is ensured, which allows for threats, intimidation, and pressure to take on multiple loans,' she says. 'In many places, linkages with banks through the SBL (SHG-Bank Linkage Scheme) have been provided, but these also provide limited funds. Only in States where these SHGs are effectively co-operatives that create income-generating opportunities (such as Kerala's Kudumbashree) has this been more successful.'
