Vivek
Menezes
Taxi and rickshaw rides in Goa are the most expensive in the country, with the added inconveniences of unpredictable service and arbitrary pricing. Tourists get cheated all the time – there is no denying it – and their bad feelings about transportation woes have kept getting worse in the ceaseless post-pandemic “revenge” vacationing binge that has overwhelmed India’s smallest state. It’s a thorny problem, because taxis and rickshaws are an important bastion of local agency in an economy otherwise bent to benefit “outside investors.” Sadly, it is also yet another area where the State has grievously bungled its responsibilities: denying the issue, ignoring it, manipulating the drivers lobby, first backing the thuggish element then betraying everyone.
Now we have draft guidelines to allow highly disruptive multinational players like Uber. It is yet another illusory band-aid that will not address any of the real damage being done to Goa’s tourism brand, while potentially destroying the lives and livelihoods of thousands of families.
I appreciated how the sharp young scholar Kaustubh Naik – he is a doctoral student at University of Pennsylvania - framed his opposition in a series of posts on social media: “I have been following the Goan taxi community’s opposition to app-based cab aggregators closely, and I stand firmly with the taxi drivers. However, what strikes me is the limited scope of the discourse surrounding this issue. Consumers focus on convenience, while taxi drivers highlight reduced profits. But the issue runs much deeper—perhaps even sinister. Goa undoubtedly faces a transit crisis, but will app-based aggregators solve it? The answer is a resounding no. These platforms, propped up by venture capital despite incurring massive losses year after year, are not here to solve transportation problems. Their aim is to dismantle mass transit as we know it. They enter the market as an alternative, exploit their financial clout to eliminate competition, and eventually lock users into their ecosystem.”
Naik has been travelling widely in Europe, the USA and India in his PhD studies. “Drawing from my own experiences using these apps in India and abroad, as well as research on platform labour and the gig economy,” he says, “there is a misconception that app-based taxis standardize fares. In reality, these apps thrive on unregulated and erratic pricing models. Users often encounter surge pricing, which can triple the fare during peak hours or adverse weather conditions. This unpredictability benefits the platform, not the consumer.” Also, “Goan taxi owners argue that app-based models are suited for metro cities, not for a region like Goa, where demand is uneven. Initially, I agreed. But further research into the conditions of drivers in metros revealed a harsh reality: these models fail even in metropolitan areas. Drivers endure gruelling work hours under exploitative conditions just to break even. Stakeholders - including government officials, media, and Goan taxi drivers - should visit metro cities and engage with drivers using these platforms. They would find disillusionment rather than satisfaction. Globally, in cities like New York and London, these apps have decimated conventional taxi systems, displacing countless workers.”
Identical pain is 100% on the cards for Goa, after the drivers lobby has been backed into a guaranteed losing position, but there is still time to escape the trap, save their livelihoods, and come around to providing the reliability, predictability and simple dignity that all consumers (and not just tourists) deserve. With an essentially insignificant investment – two/three lakhs – they can very quickly power up their own zero commissions “direct-to-driver” mobile app like the fully open source Namma Yatri ride-hailing service across the border in Karnataka. Simple, elegant, equitable, rigorously committed to community involvement, with 100% access to all data and source code – it is easily replicable in Goa, and can be up and running by the end of this month itself. Instead of risking further unpopularity, this is the last best chance for taxi and rickshaw operators to acknowledge the necessity for improvements, yet stay organized, strong and sustainable while turning around the prevailing narratives about rampant cheating and criminality.
In this regard, of course, it must also be acknowledged that taxi and rickshaw drivers have also become convenient scapegoats to distract from vastly more destructive forces that threaten not just Goa tourism but Goa itself. As an acerbic commentator pointed out on Kaustubh’s post: “Taxi drivers are a soft target. They're not more scammy, corrupt, or unreasonable than any other Indian business or even the government, it's just that they're easier to criticise.” What is more, they are mostly vocal locals in the grim current scenario clearly favouring silent migrants, and so the political and economic elites of the state have wasted no time in turning their backs. It has been an object lesson in political expediency to watch how the stakeholders of this significant sector – and hugely significant contributors to the Goa’s tourism success over decades – became marginalized, and abandoned by even their most recent champions.
The unmaking of the state will not be fixed by any cheap taxi app, and greater conveniences for budget tourists will make no difference to Goa’s economy, society, environment, culture or human development. Instead, all these – each one an integral factor in what makes the state attractive to locals and tourists alike – are in catastrophic decline, and literally falling apart in the overall collapse of governance. For just one example, the government has just conformed that Goa lost an unconscionable, almost incomprehensible 20% of its tree cover in just the past decade. How can you allow that – and conspire for even worse until the High Court intervened – and still claim you’re interested in “high value” tourism? People pay attention, and when destinations seem degraded they move on. This is why casinos have been the kiss of death to Goa – even beyond horrific murders like the one last month at the Marriott in Miramar – because their relentless vulgarity degrades the entire tourism brand. They drive away families, and only attract the worst kind of clientele. No app is going to change that.
(Vivek Menezes is a
writer and co-founder of the Goa Arts and
Literature Festival)