Why the Uber ban in Delhi is justified
Almost everyone who has used Uber loves it. It is a good service and miles ahead of what we get from the local taxi services. In a city like Delhi, where public transport is still stuck in the last century, Uber is also akin to a service something we expect in the 21st century.
No wonder, our first reaction to the news that Uber has been banned in Delhi has been of outrage. But take a few steps back. The ban on Uber is not as illogical as it seems. There is some merit in the argument that the Delhi government has made while banning the service. Uber wasn't complying with the regulations that govern taxi services in Delhi. We can debate over whether these regulations are justified or not. But at least, at the moment, they exist and Uber wasn't following them.
Despite popular perception, Uber is not a taxi service. It is a platform built on top of smartphones that allows people to find and book taxis. It is basically an app. That app allows people to see the cab around them and then book them. The app also has an integrated payment service so neither the driver nor the rider have to worry about the payment. There is no haggling for fare. There is no worry of fast meter. Your ride is recorded in the app and then automatically money is deducted on the basis of distance covered.
Uber takes a commission after every ride and the rest of the money is transferred to an account managed by the driver.
In a way, Uber is like eBay for taxi drivers. It allows buyers (the rider) and the seller (the driver) to connect in an easy way.
The problem is that offering a taxi service is different from selling a phone on an online portal. Delhi has rules that govern taxi services, including radio taxi services. Considering that Uber is acting as a kind of radio taxi service, the government realised that it should have been following the norms laid out for the taxi services. It wasn't and hence Uber is banned.
It is a reasonable decision. We should not be outraging about it.
Instead there is one more side to it and we can debate about it. The problem with Uber is the classic problem of technology versus regulation.
These services are so new and so radical in their approach that governments department, which are often staffed with people who are behind the curve, have no clue about them. Uber was operating in Delhi since last November. But it is only now that the transport department took note of it. In fact, here is what special commissioner of Delhi Transport Department, Satish Mathur, told the Economic Times, when he was asked about the government stance on services like Uber: "Right now, we have banned Uber as we came to know only after this incident about its services in Delhi. We too had to log on to the internet to know how the company works."
Until Friday night, Mathur apparently had no clue about Uber.
There are many countries debating the operations of Uber as well as Airbnb, a hotel service that is similar to Uber. Delhi is not the first city to ban it. Uber has been banned in other cities.
The problem starts when something goes wrong, when Uber and Airbnb, acting as intermediaries, connect consumers to actual sellers of a service. What is their liability in these cases?
There are no easy answers to this question, especially in a country like India that has an inherent problem of law and order as well as shoddy compliance with laws. This magnifies the issues around services like Uber. For its operations, the app assumes that a person who is already running a taxi service will have all the regulatory approvals and verifications in place. In most of the countries that is true. But not in India where obtaining a fake driving license is as easy as shelling out Rs 5,000 to a shady guy outside the RTO office.
The ban on Uber, as far as regulations are concerned, seems right, at least in spirit. So let's not get angry about it. Instead, as we should be pushing government to have a discussion services like Uber and Airbnb and to come up with the regulations that look part of the 21st century.