Business unusual opens a Pandora’s box
KOCHI: It’s fact that inter-state buses of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) have lower ridership and the reasons for it may vary from fewer service hours and longer waits compared to private bus services. Though KSRTC ticket costs are less compared to private buses, people are forced to depend heavily on private buses for travelling to cities like Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru.
KSRTC MD M P Dinesh has a strong argument to rising operations of private inter-state buses. “The private buses do not follow any rules and regulations while KSRTC strictly adheres to it. For all these years, the private operators have been enjoying a free run violating rules and fixing rates in accordance with demand and we don’t know how they get away with it,” he said.
There’s a deeper reason for this and a senior officer of the Transport Department said there was a big lobby pitching for the major groups that operate inter-state bus services and the lobby gets the support of politicians who have an unholy nexus with the private bus operators.
There’s some truth to that and the case of Kallada bus service itself reveals the dark underbelly of the political nexus. “The particular private bus operator has been flouting rules and no one really took action against them until the attack on passengers went viral on social media, forcing the authorities to crack the whip,” the officer said. The stronghold of the nexus is so evident the government has so far not taken seriously a complaint raised by KSRTC against the private inter-state bus operators who undertake services to Bengaluru and other cities as contract carriage and stage carriers.
“These private services also transport large quantities of goods, violating rules. They also cancel trips if they don’t get the required number of passengers,” the KSRTC MD said. It’s so evident parallel private services were causing much harm to the KSRTC for the past several years eating into its major share of profits. While a majority of the private operators, owned by benamis in which politicians and officers have a stake, were operating scot-free, the authorities, mainly Motor Vehicles Department (MVD), were looking in the opposite direction. “These illegal operators have the blessings of senior government officers and politicians,” the officers said.
Malayalees are spread across the length and breadth of major cities in South India. And they travel between these cities and their home towns very often. Cashing in on this phenomenon, a lot of private bus operators have sprouted in the recent past. But the quality of their services leaves much to be desired. The state government has no proper mechanism in place to ensure that these operators conduct a people-friendly and professional service. The result: The public remains vulnerable to exploitation and fleecing by these operators. Neither the Railways nor the state carrier KSRTC has been able to come up with a proper transport plan to mitigate the woes.