Maharashtra Diary: No longer the 'Best' in Mumbai

The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) buses have for long been the second lifeline for Mumbaikars after the local suburban trains. Once hailed as the world’s most efficient and possibly the cheapest, the city bus service is still being used by 30 lakh people daily.

The service, however, has been run to the ground, complain Mumbaikars. Although BEST’s fleet was to have 5,000 buses by March 2024, the number has actually dipped sharply and is less than 3,000, of which most are private buses on ‘wet lease’.

Another nail in the coffin was the approval to double bus fares. The Supreme Court’s order to hold local body elections may have provided a respite though. “Notify local body elections within four weeks and hold the elections, stalled since 2022, within four months,” stated the apex court on 6 May.

“Today, bureaucrats are occupying all the municipal corporations and panchayats and are making major policy decisions. A complete democratic process has been stalled due to this litigation. Officers have no accountability,” observed Justice Surya Kant.

Results would be subject to the judgement of the court in cases challenging the reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC). Reservation of seats for the elections must be maintained as it had existed before the submission of the J.K. Banthia Commission report, which provided for 27 per cent OBC reservations in local body elections.

The past 10 years have shown how a robust and functional public transport system can be ground to the dust, wrote Hussain Indorewala, co-convenor of the citizens’ group Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST. In a recent column in the Free Press Journal, he pointed out that privatisation of BEST buses initiated in 2017 to reduce losses and improve efficiency has achieved the exact opposite result.

Losses, disruptions, breakdowns, accidents and waiting time have gone up while services have worsened and ridership has fallen. The plan is to privatise the service and shut down BEST, he suspects. During the tenure of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, bus fares were reduced.

Now during the tenure of the BJP-led government, the fare could be doubled. The approval to double the existing fares in the first revision since 2018 was given by the BMC administrator Bhushan Gagrani. It was expected to become effective from 8 May 2025, but in view of the direction of the Supreme Court and the impending local body polls later this year, there could be second thoughts and the decision left to the new corporators and the elected municipal council.

The decision to double the bus fares, justified by the authorities to make up the sustained losses, had expectedly raised the hackles of users, a large section of whom felt that service needed to improve first. They also believe that the steep increase in fares is unwarranted and would strain the finances of the common man.

BEST buses no longer run on several routes because the fleet has become old and depleted. Having increasingly turned to private bus owners to lease their buses to BEST, it currently owns just 650 buses of which as many as 400 will be scrapped by November.

The waiting period for the 2,100 electric buses is getting longer and the (official) average waiting time for a bus is now 30 minutes. Unofficially, it’s even longer. Commuters are forced to walk longer distances to reach the bus stops because services have come down.

BMC sources say BEST doesn’t have the budget to procure its own buses. A CNG bus costs around Rs 60 lakh, while an electric AC bus costs approximately Rs 1.8 crore. Civic activist Anil Gagali has warned that fare hikes without improved frequency will drive commuters to auto-rickshaws and taxis. Commuter rights activist Rupesh Shelatkar holds that “BEST must maintain its own fleet because the city has already faced disruptions due to wet-lease staff strikes”.  

The minimum fare for non-AC buses was proposed to be increased from Rs 5 to Rs 10 for a 5 km distance and AC bus fare from Rs 6 to Rs 12 for the same stretch. For 50 km, the non-AC fare was proposed to be raised by 200 per cent and the AC fare by 160 per cent.

A weekly pass would cost Rs 140 and monthly passes over a 5 km distance were to be raised to between Rs 500 and Rs 1,100 for monthly, quarterly and half-yearly durations. An increase in the fare of corporate AC passes was also proposed.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and MLA Aaditya Thackeray fumed that people in power are making the everyday life of Mumbaikars more difficult. Once known as the world’s cheapest city bus service which served millions of Mumbaikars, the decline of BEST must be reversed. How to turn it around is another question altogether.

Calling Hindus for jobs?

Days after the Pahalgam terror attack on tourists, the Hindu Jagran Manch launched a ‘Call Hindu Jobs’ portal. While this, in itself, was not scandalous (given the history of the Hindu Jagran Manch), its inauguration was. The minister in-charge of skill development, employment and entrepreneurship, the BJP’s Mangal Prabhat Lodha, launched the portal from his office.

The event took place days before the government presented two serving women officers, one from the Army and one from the Air Force to brief the media on ‘Operation Sindoor’. The joint briefing by foreign secretary Vikram Misri and the two women officers, one Hindu and the other a Muslim, was hailed as a messaging masterclass; and the government emphasised that India had foiled the design of the terrorists who wanted to divide Indians on religious lines and trigger communal riots.

The portal, however, sent out a very different message, people pointed out, with a name like Call Hindu Jobs. There was not much clarity offered by either the minister or the HJM, an RSS affiliate. The portal is not yet functional and the mobile app is still under development.

Mangal Prabhat Lodha

The developer however hinted that the portal sought to bring employers and unemployed together and would function as an e-commerce platform besides promoting religious tourism and facilitating online match-making (for Hindus only, of course).

Opposition leaders in the state were not amused. A state minister, who has taken office under oath to the Constitution, has no business promoting a communal portal, they pointed out. While the RSS affiliate evidently wants to monetise the platform with a rallying cry to Hindus, it was in poor taste. The problem of unemployment in the state is grim alright.

Last year, when Mumbai Airport Authority held a walk-in interview to hire 600 loaders, 25,000 turned up. At the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Rozgar Mela organised in Kandivali (West) on 12 April, less than half the people who had turned up were offered placements. Meanwhile, the jobless are committing suicide in large numbers.

The NCRB reported that in 2021, 3,541 people killed themselves after citing unemployment as the motive. As many as 796 of them were from Maharashtra. Though 2022 NCRB data recorded a relatively lower number of suicides for similar reasons (3,170), the highest number (642) was still from Maharashtra.

Others questioned the utility of such portals when the Fadnavis government has announced a Rs 5,500 crore scheme for training and internship for the unemployed. The scheme aims at skilling unemployed youth and placing them as interns (a variation of the ‘pehli naukri pakki’ promise made in last year’s Congress manifesto).

The state government also has a portal of its own, the Mahaswayam employment registration portal, to meet the target of skilling 45 lakh unemployed every year. The target is, however, unlikely to be achieved.