Chennai Autorickshaws

Sample taken from newspaper ‘Adyar Talk’, 26 July – 1 Aug, 2008 by K Balakumar:

‘Our grouse was that the auto’s don’t have any lane-discipline and generally move about as if they were powered by engines working on the Brownian theory of random movement, which should state that the speed of any auto is determined by the fate of the person that it runs into. But suddenly we have to grapple with share-autos that doubtless work on the Brownian theory of EVEN MORE random movement, which exactly is no theory but just a random happening beyond the continuum of physics and traffic laws.’

If you have a conversation with a person visiting Chennai for the first time, there is very little chance you would NOT hear complaints about our ‘Baashas’. Chancing upon the fact that the visitors would not know tamil, they would charge even more. They are also notorious for never using the ‘meter’ (Which is good many times – otherwise, he would take you on a Chennai yatra irrespective of your destination!), abusing you, being very arrogant, refusing to go to your destination, driving very rash, rowdyism etc.

There are some standard guidelines for handing Chennai auto walas – Know the distance of the destination so that you can bargain, do not ‘sound’ like an out stationer, never go by the meter, always bargain with him (Walking away usually works), never get into the autorickshaw until the price is settled, never ask fellow-auto drivers - they almost always back their colleagues. In fact, Chennai would probably be the only place where the difference between auto rickshaw & call-taxi fares is negligible!

Thinking about it, I’ve always wondered – Why is it so bad in Chennai? In Delhi, everybody plies by the meter, and none of them are tampered. They agree to go even to nearby locations. They run on CNG, and are very reasonable. It’s even better in other cities like Mumbai / Bangalore / Pune / Ahmedabad /Bhubaneshwar, where the meter rate is fixed & the driver would even return change of 1 Rupee!

To go from my house to Tidel Park, which is around 1.5 Km, no auto rickshaw would come for anything less than Rs. 30 – amazing. Now what exactly gives the auto rickshaws such clout? The Chennai Public transport is pretty good – the bus/train/MRTS network in Chennai does a pretty nice job. But because it is convenient, these guys get their (more than good) share of business. But why are they so arrogant? It’s because they have a lot of clout. How come they wield so much clout? That’s because most of them are owned by politicians/police/RTO personnel. So irrespective of which government rules, irrespective of how much people crib, nothing much is expected to happen here. I am not too sure given this environment, how enforcement of price lists, ensuring non-tampering of meters etc. can be done… any ideas?!