Running on empty: Cab drivers trip on EMIs as rides dry up in Delhi

NEW DELHI: Sitting inside his cab parked under a shade at the Rajendra Place commercial complex, 45-year-old cab driver Satish Pal was ruminating on how he was going to pay the next instalment of the bank loan he had taken to buy his vehicle. In the three hours he sat brooding, he had not got a single booking from passengers.

“I left my home in Rohini at 9am and got Rs 161 for that ride. From 11am, I have waited in vain for a second trip,” Pal said. The Rs 161 was likely to be his only earning of the day for his family of wife and two children. Like Pal, most taxi drivers are facing a hard time. It’s not as if app-based cab services aren’t permitted to operate. They are, but passengers are hard to find when a large number of people are working from home and very few are going to malls, markets or other public place.

Many cabbies have started on other jobs. Owners of cabs bought on loan are, however, forced to carry on in an effort to earn at least the EMI amount. To run their households, many taxi drivers have eaten into their savings or taken loans. They fear they will be on the streets in the next few months if passengers remain elusive.

“I can’t sleep at night thinking of the future,” anguished Pal. “Apart from the car EMI, I also have to pay around Rs. 2.3 lakh in traffic fines that I have accumulated in the last few months. I guess I will have to surrender my car because I can’t pay either the fines or the EMIs.”

Ram Niwas, 29, who lives in Khoda near Mayur Vihar, has sent his wife and daughter to his hometown of Auraiya in Uttar Pradesh. “At least they will have food and a roof over their head there. I haven’t paid rent for the last six months and the landlord is threatening to throw me out,” he said. He left his home at 5am and till 7 pm on Thursday had received one call for Rs 175.

“How am I supposed to pay for fuel and maintenance and the EMI at Rs 175 a day. There are absolutely no customers, no matter for how long I remain logged in,” Ram Niwas said. He had started with driving someone else’s car and then an autorickshaw before buying his own car on loan. “There is nothing I can do in Auraiya either because our landholding is so small it won’t sustain the three of us,” said the glum cabbie.

Manjit Singh, who owns three cars, is comparatively better off even if he hasn’t earned much in recent months. “I used to drive one cab on an app-based platform, and two were used to ferry employees of a call centre. But with the IT employees now working from home, the company no longer needs my cabs,” Singh sighed.

He remains logged into the app for passenger calls for 13-14 hours every day. “Even when home, I am logged in and thankfully got some bookings between 3am and 4 am,” he said. “I mainly drove between Delhi and Gurgaon, but there is absolutely no demand on this route now.” Getting a booking is not as fulfilling as it sounds, however, because almost always there is no passenger on the way back. Like Pal, Singh too has run up a huge Rs 1 lakh in unpaid traffic fines and alleges that he has been booked even for driving at 41 kmph.

Kamaljeet Gill, president, Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association of Delhi, pointed out that such pending traffic fines are almost the ultimate back breaker for cab drivers who are going through possibly the worst phase of their lives. “When there are no customers, how will drivers meet their expenses? They don’t get fixed salaries,” Gill said. “With no option, a few hundred have started plying their cabs as ambulances under a Delhi government initiative.”

A few hundred among two lakh cabbies in the National Capital Region making some money doesn’t help much, argued Sanjay Samrat, president, Delhi Taxi, Tourist Transporters and Tour Operators Association. “The drivers are taking loans or selling their wives’ jewellery to make ends meet. While app-based cab drivers have little work, those driving tourist taxis have no work at all,” he said. “Do you know that until they pay off their traffic fines, they can’t even sell their cars?”