I am tired of autowalas in this city (and chennai of course)! I wonder sometimes if they have no morals at all! If it is not a well paying profession then maybe they should think of other means of making a living.
Every other guy wants you to pay them an insane amount! At 8pm they want 1 n 1/2 meter (did you know that the official time for it is after 11pm?); at 9 it becomes their fundamental right to demand Rs 200 for a distance of 8.5 km! Oh man use your rusted, regressed brain! Why will I pay @ Rs 20/km for a ride in auto when i can call a cab for Rs 15/km any time of the day/night!! I shall not even get started about how ugly things can get if it is 10pm and beyond. The worst is that this is becoming so common that it is extremely hard to find any auto that does not demand more than the meter fare, even in the day time. Hey why should I give you that extra 10- 20 Rs. you earn a living with a lot of hard work, so do I! If you are taking an auto from outside an apartment complex then they just assume that these are rich brats and they must pay us extra for our misfortune of being born in poorer families!
Earlier autowalas would screw their noses the moment you utter tht your destination is Tata Institute. Now they screw their nose even for M.G. Road! Are these guys waiting to get passengers to Mysore or what? That is the other thing, officially they are not supposed to refuse a passenger but who cares! Not even the cops. I once asked a cop to help me find an auto and he asked me to get into any one of the several autos parked in the stand. When I tried, each autowala refused.. right in front of the worthless cop. He just stood there almost begging each one to take me while they laughed at me and passed comments in Kanada which I unfortunately understood :(
Of course if they do agree to go on meter then their meter will be tampered in 8/10 cases. If nothing else, he will surely try to take you around a few extra kms to earn a few extra coins!
The sad part is that in a city like bangalore which has a few buses sprinkled on the road in the name of public transport, one is compelled to be at the mercy of these dishonest @$$#0##$
I face it twice in a day. Everyday. I dont know what to do. I dont want to travel on a two wheeler for two reasons: 1) I dont know how to ride one, 2) I seriously doubt the driving skills of the maniacs driving on the road and I surely dont want to die flattened under someone's wheels or worse still be handicapped for life :(
Today an autowala actually threatened me for not paying him 10 Rs over the meter. After a long debate when I refused to budge from my stance he said that I should wait till he finds me outside Institute main gate and will "see me" then!
I am disgusted by the greed and sheer audacity of these so called unfortunate guys born in poorer families.Is this a problem of all developing nations I wonder? I dont mean to sound rude but I dont see how a nation full of such dishonest, lazy people can ever crawl out of the shit it is in now!
5 comments:
err, i take autos almost every weekend. not everyday. but here's my few cents ...
except in abt 5% of the cases, i
m satisfied with the autowallahs of bangalore.
but i have the following rules:
1. unless its a very short distance, meter is a must. no ala carte rate.
2. if the meter speeds, i ask the driver to stop, pay current fare and get off. though this has happened only twice.
3. i pay 20 as the minimum fee for short distance. it includes the opportunity cost of the driver who might have lost a longer trip becos of ferrying me for a short distance.
4. i have no complaints against drivers who don't come for short distance. i'm a free market conservative. businesses have the right to refuse serve anyone.
5. ok, with one + half after 9 pm on weekends and twice meter closer to or after mid-night
ofcourse the following things help,
1. always hire speaking in kannada
2. middle aged or elderly muslim driver with skull cap? he is certain to be honest
3. i lived in chennai for 5 years :-) compared to them bangalore autowallahs are easily manageable.
bala maybe we should speak one on one regarding this but i will put down a few points here:
1) I ALWAYS speak in kanada and my kanada is decent
2) you are right about the elderly muslim thing it always works for me and I have passed this tip to several others in the past
3) You may not have faced this problem much for several reasons: a) you dont use auto regularly b) you stay south of the city which is full of malls where they will easily get people who are ready to spend extra c) you probably know the rate along the routes quite well so you will know when meter speeds, many people do not even realise this etc
4) Maybe if it is a women in question, they find it easier to intimidate. Once a guy actually chased me and my friends (all females) and attempted to attack us because we didnt give him double at 9pm when we had already fixed the rate at 1 n 1/2 (he was stopped by IISc security after a while)
5) Bangalore is crowded with people who get a fat pay-cheque and I can understand how paying 10-20 extra will not make a difference to them but hello... we are not all the same, remember?
'Opportunity cost' of the auto driver.. 'free market conservative'.. wow!
man you obviously live in a different world. Dunno what you do Balaji, but you definitely sound like a 'free market conservative'. Us poor research folk, we just don't have enough money to be free-market enough! maybe one day we will see the light of reason.
I look at it quite simply. The laws weren't made up by me, it was made by the government. We follow them. Why not the others?
No amount of 'free market' can justify abuse and threat of physical violence. That's criminal, and we need to protest. The less we protest, the more it'll carry on.
@Dawgmatix:
I agree :D cudn't agree more
well, free market conservative is w.r.t to autowallahs refusing to do short distances. any rule which says autowallahs shud come wherever we want to go is non-sense. if its not economical for them, they won't come. thats fair.
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