Taxing taxis? Just take all the money people are left with
Make people feel at home by taking whatever they are left with, including hope.
Always trust your government to disappoint you. Thanks to the lockdown, taxis are not allowed on the road but people stranded abroad are allowed to land at the airport. To help them reach home, the UP State Road Transport Corporation is arranging taxis. But charging as little as Rs 10,000 for a sedan and Rs 12,000 for an SUV. We are not talking about migrants who trust their own two feet. We are talking about the well-heeled here, back from their Corona-extended holidays, white-collar business trips, and expensive studies abroad. These are the people who can pay through their nose but the government being the government has no business sense. This is the time to make money and revive the ailing public sector enterprises. The taxis can subsidise the buses that are taking only Rs 1,000 from the poor who don't even have Rs 1,000. So, the buses are a non-performing asset and the poor are travelling on foot. A thousand rupees, my foot!
The good old demand-supply equation must dictate fair pricing. The government has done well in squeezing the supply while raising the demand but utterly failed at profiting from it. These people have paid close to a lakh or often above that just to reach Delhi. Now they can smell the coffee but can't have it. Their hunger to hug their families and see their friends is at a peak. Strike the iron when it's hot. This is when they will trade an arm for a taxi. Leave the arm and take all the money. Empty their bank accounts and fill the coffers.
Look, people know money has little value as their lives are at stake. This is the time they are least sentimental about their savings. They are not going to take their savings to the pyre in this grave situation. We could impose new taxes but there is nothing that hasn't been taxed to death already. This may be the time for the old give-and-take method. Provide them a service for a fee. Private players are already doing that. The 10-rupee mask costs 50 rupees. The mosquito net that cost Rs 200 is going for Rs 600. Where is PPP when you need PPE? We are taking about Public Private Partnership. Thoda tum khaao, thoda hum khaayein. Sharing is caring. When the private sector is laughing all the way to Paytm, why shouldn't the public sector undertakings take what's not due to them?
While we are at it, we should explore some ideas. Keep shops closed for some more time, under the Epidemics Act. Just like mosquito season has people out looking for nets, they will be out looking for water coolers, ACs, fans, etc. Under the Epidemics Act, empower the public sector undertakings to have monopoly over sale of these. People will pay any price you quote because they would want to cool themselves before Corona gets them.
How they stood up in queues to fill the excise department's coffers when liquor shops opened! Delhi imposed a Corona Fee of 70 per cent and people were like, we want to contribute. Other states followed suit and citizens rose up to the addiction. People have other addictions too. Pan masala, gutkha, cigarettes, paan, bidi.... Do not allow these gumtis to open and empower a public sector undertaking, of course under the Epidemics Act of the Raj times, to sell these. Something like State Pan-Beedi Corporation. We have already hiked the fine for spitting in public but to little effect, because pan and pan masala are still not available. Charge them Rs 100 for a pan and then collect Rs 500 in spitting fine. Make them pay Rs 1,000 for a cigarette pack and then fine them Rs 2,000 for smoking. When they get cancer, they pay a surcharge. If they don't, your profits multiply.
We can go on and on about how to control the supply of milk to milk the opportunity but bureaucrats will do a better job than anyone else. The food and civil supplies department officers will have more uncivil ways to prohibit the supplies. Bright ideas isn't a monopoly of the road transport corporation officers. The point is that we can wean people off addictions while strengthening the state's exchequer so that it can recruit more babus with even better ideas. Like the babus who devised the taxi fare from the airport in these unprecedented times with unprecedented lack of empathy. The virus is cruel and doesn't discriminate, so why should the state do?
Home, home food, home love ... these are addictions. People miss them. They experience withdrawal symptoms. They walk thousands of kilometres, fly across continents, the haves spend a fortune doing that and the have-nots are hopeless romantics run over by state transport buses. Make them feel at home by taking whatever they are left with, including hope. People are replaced easily; they are a sexually transmitted disease. State is permanent. State is sex.