ExpertDabbler

Here is what I have in terms of suggestions and solutions. Of course all or any of this can be dabated, discussed and ridiculed.

I think no political or legal measures will make the life better for the common man. Such has been the law enforcement –criminal-political nexus that I’ve lost all hope on these types. I feel, things should work on a much smaller scale. Afterall individual honesty should be much easier than corporate honesty. But unfortunately in a country like India where citizens have a huge gap between what they preach and and what they practice, the market is the only way effective judge. The only way to hit ruthlessly and effectively is through economic measures.

So here we go.

Make a law which empowers the government to award running this whole auto rickshaw transport business to some corporates. The government should only try to administer at a very high level by fixing minimum, maximum rates, specifying training etc( yes training, I’ll come to it later). The government can collect license fees too. I’m not an MBA but entry by corporates who may have the funding to operate on a mega scale may bring the prices down and make it affordable for the common man.

But how about our labour force? After all auto drivers are not MBAs from IIMs but more similar to workers who sweat it out. How will they behave?

Well that’s precisely one of the reasons why I advocate corporates running this whole auto business.

I don’t know if it’s a desi thing. But Indian labour can function very well within a given set of rules, a hierarch to supervise, a performance based incentive system and a stable organisational structure. They basically want someone to take care of them. But our labour is pathetic when it comes to managing things on their own without any supervision.

For example, I think the auto drivers would be happy to work for a base salary, with performance bonus on every extra mile driven above the target or revenue generated. But leave it to them to govern themselves and all hell breaks lose. They’d rather sit with an old Dhinathanthi and tea glass in each hands whilst looking to make enough money for the day in a single savari. The bottomline, enough skill but lack of self-discipline.

The Businessworld dated Aug 21 has an interesting article on the changing face of the blue collar workers in our country. The article talks about ITI graduates, who toil for 12-16 hours, who have their own pack of credit cards and some even own cars as well. That was real gladdening news but it also pointed out another aspect - how many would’ve done as much or even half as much if they were running their own Small scale units? Not many, in my opinion.

In India, whenever the services sector has let in the corporates and whenever the government stayed away from day to day administrations, the system has worked very well indeed for the customer.

From the government front they should provide directions like what sort of training the driver should need to take and setup certifying exams as applicable for auto drivers. This may sound funny, but I think clean habits(at least on duty), courtesy, and knowledge of the city are mandatory for an auto driver. I’ve faced situations where the auto driver’s knowledge of the city was pathetic. One guy asked me once ”Anna arivalayama, adhu enga irukku?” The assumption right now, that auto drivers know the city well is just that, our assumption.

To summarise, follow the lessons learnt in all other areas and open this out to some corporate who has deep pockets. Let the business fuel its autos with petrol,diesel,LPG, water or whatever.

The corporate may soon be filthy rich at the expense of auto drivers, but I don’t see a way out for the common man.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.