TRANSPORT-INDIA: Govt Took Us for a Ride, Say Taxi Drivers

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 8 2001 (IPS) - Sohan Singh, who drives a taxicab in India’s national capital, has not seen his family for two days. Reason? He was stuck in a miles-long queue waiting for his turn to fill up on compressed natural gas (CNG).

“I have earned very little in the last few days and I am looking for alternative means to pay off the loan with which I bought this CNG-run taxi and feed my family — if I don’t commit suicide,” said Singh.

Like other taxi drivers in the capital, Singh was forced to buy a new CNG-driven vehicle in compliance with a Supreme Court order which, this year, banned petrol and diesel-driven commercial transport from the national capital.

In all, an estimated 15,000 taxis, 50,000 three wheelers (‘baby taxies’) and 5,000 buses went off the roads as a result of the order, but the improvement in air quality has been dramatic.

“My new vehicle runs well and is far less polluting than my old diesel-run taxi, but what I did not bargain for was being made to wait for hours and even days just to refuel,” Singh said.

India’s Petroleum Minister Ram Naik, who repeatedly assured the Supreme Court that adequate supplies of CNG would be made available, is now singing a different tune and saying that it could take years to set up additional CNG-filling stations to meet Delhi’s needs.

“The government has taken us for a ride,” Jaswant Singh Arora, president of the Federation of Transport Unions Congress (FTUC), said Wednesday.

“First they make us invest in CNG vehicles and now they tell us they don’t have enough fuel supplies. Either they should ensure supplies or compensate us for losses we cannot afford,” Arora said.

The FTUC and other transport unions representing operators of three-wheeler ‘baby taxies’ and buses have called for a one-day strike on Friday to protest against the government’s lack of initiative in making good its promises on CNG supplies.

Former Delhi chief minister and leader of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Madan Lal Khurana, said he would personally lead a march to the Supreme Court on Friday, when a hearing of the CNG issue is due.

But Khurana, a seasoned politician, said he holds as responsible for the crisis the rival Congress party, which now rules Delhi state, in which the national capital of New Delhi falls.

In turn, Delhi’s present chief minister, Sheila Dixit, blames the BJP for the crisis and has accused the central Petroluem Ministry of not ensuring adequate supplies of CNG in order to embarrass her government.

On Friday, a joint-affidavit signed by four concerned central ministries — petroleum, transport, law and the environment — are expected to present to the Supreme Court an affidavit expressing inability to meet a September deadline set by the court for full CNG compliance.

But the Supreme Court has already taken a dim view of the indifference shown by state and central government in implementing its orders, which were based on a study by the expert Bhure Lal committee on environmental pollution caused by diesel and petrol exhaust.

Operators like Sohan Singh are convinced that small operators whose livelihoods are at stake are being made to suffer because of intense rivalry between the Congress and the BJP, both of which are anxious to hold power in Delhi state.

The ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, highly respected in academic circles and published from New Delhi, commented in an editorial that there were several steps that the state and central government could have taken since 1998 when the court first passed its order favouring a switch to CNG.

For example, said the weekly, the state government could have set up a coordination committee between itself and the nodal central ministries.

“The government did none of this. Nor did it consider the financial woes of the small transport owners, who were left to negotiate their CNG needs on their despite the fact that the state government had by January this year 66 percent of its budgetary allocation unspent,” the editorial said.

“The state government hopes to play up the issue of commuter sympathy to cover up its administrative lapses and lack of governance,” it said.

Khurana gave the game away when he commented at a press conference on Tuesday that the CNG issue was certain to prove the doom for the Congress party in municipal elections which were due.

“In the same way that we (the BJP) lost the Delhi Assembly elections over the issue of a rise in onion prices, the Congress party is going to pay for the CNG crisis at the municipal level elections,” Khurana said cynically.

Meanwhile, the issue threatens to turn into a serious law and order problem with frustrated operators of CNG vehicles turning riotous at the few filling stations scattered around the city.

“We get several calls a day from the CNG filling stations with brawls breaking out frequently among drivers after argument as to who would get a chance to fill up first,” said Amod Kanth, joint commissioner in the city police.

“With each passing day the queues are getting longer and longer and the CNG operators are naturally agitated because they have invested large sums of money in their vehicles,” Kant said.

So far, Delhi’s long-suffering commuters have not protested — but that could change after Friday’s strike, which is expected to paralyse public transport in the capital.