Demonetisation: Mumbai's black-and-white taxis, autos struggle to go cashless

Representational picture

The government's recent demonetisation drive, which encourages Mumbaikars to go cashless has adversely affected the city's 'Kaali-Peelis'. According to a report by The Times of India, black-and-yellow taxi and auto rickshaw drivers are finding it extremely difficult to adapt to the cashless method.

While electronic methods of payment are slowly gaining ground with many vegetable vendors, pani puriwalas, the traffic police and even cobblers utilising it, taxi and auto rickshaw drivers aren't joining the bandwagon entirely as of yet.

Since the demonetisation drive began, taxi and auto rickshaw drivers in Mumbai faced an immediate cash crunch as citizens were opting for app-based cab aggregators, where payment could be made through the e-wallet system. This resulted in a 60 per cent loss in business for them.

Furthermore, auto and taxi unions are finding it difficult to educate the entire population of drivers to use these new methods. Also, most auto, taxi drivers explain that they find the new system to be a hassle, because even if they managed to adopt the new cashless system, they would not be getting a lump sum at the end of the day as the money would be transferred into their account and most find the banking process like withdrawing money to be tedious.

Currently, auto rickshaw and taxi unions plan to train batches of 250 to 500 drivers at a time, so that they can handle online payments.