[Resolved]  Ahmedabad Traffic System — Exploitation by Auto-rickshaw drivers at Ahmedabad airport

Address:

Ahmedabad, Gujarat

To: a) Public Relations Officer,
Regional Transport Authority,
Gandhi Ashram Road,
Near Subhash Bridge,
Ahmedabad, 380 027

b) Commissioner of Traffic Police
Ahmedabad City

Dear Ma’am/Sirs,

This is to register a formal complaint against auto-rickshaw with license no GJ-1 BX 246 for a) overcharging me and b) for refusing to come by meter from the airport to my residence at Vastrapur on the night of 24 Dec 2010.

My wife and I had landed from flight IC 613 at Ahmedabad at 10:25 pm and were met by auto-rickshaw drivers who demanded no less that Rs. 250 for going to Vastrapur. The rate by meter is around Rs. 100 from my experience of the occasional honest rickshaw driver.

This cartelisation of a service and open flouting of public transport rules and regulations and the absence of any police official at the airport puts the passengers in a helpless situation where they have to succumb to the greedy demands of the auto-rickshaws out of sheer necessity of getting home.

I am doing my duty of informing you. I expect that you will heed the complaints of citizens like me who have no recourse to law except to write such letters after being exploited. There can be no ‘proof’ of the offence in these cases unless one carries hidden cameras, which normal citizens like me don’t. There can only be prevention through on-the-spot help by police officers present there all the time.

Please a) inform me of the action you choose to take in this case against the erring auto-rickshaw driver, b) advise me of how to handle such cases in future (don’t tell me to take a pre-paid taxi – at Rs. 350, that is government-formalised exploitation), and c) tell me also what steps you plan to take to solve the problem on a permanent basis.

I feel that the passengers’ interests are not being sufficiently guarded by the traffic police. There are many allegations of police colluding with the rickshaw drivers in fleecing the passengers. Your action on my complaint will determine whether I believe this allegation or not.

To inform you of what an auto-rickshaw driver who took me to the airport told me, he said that “...when we take passengers to the airport, the official rules at the airport do not allow us to take return passengers back. Also, we are the victim of the dadagiri of local auto drivers who do not allow us to wait nearby where the passengers can walk to us to engage us.”

His account reveals that conditions have been created where everyone is making the most of the passenger’s helplessness. I demand a) that any rule disallowing autos who have gone to the airport to drop departing passengers from picking up arriving passengers be immediately changed to allow such autos to find return business, and b) that rules and regulations of metering rates for various times of day and night be posted prominently in public view at the airport taxi pick-up area (in which my organisation – National Institute of Design – can help, and c) that police be posted at the airport departure to assist the passengers in finding public transport at metered rates.

Without common-sense, sympathetic solutions like these, the public (at least I) will never believe the self-proclamations of “good governance” by the Gujarat Government.

Prof. Ranjit Konkar
National Institute of Design
Paldi, Ahmedabad