The Delhi Government will make physical meters in the cab of online cab aggregators compulsory, despite the compulsory GPS installation, reports Economic Times. This is under a cab aggregators’ policy which the government is coming up with and will be presented to the public for consultation before it is approved by Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung. The ET report states that the policy will be public in a couple of days. The policy also states that cab service providers will need to follow government set fares for cab rides. We’ve written to Ola and Uber for comments and will update this when we hear from them. If setting a physical digital meter in the cab is indeed in the Delhi Government’s policy, we think that the move is completely unnecessary, given that the app is already doing the meter’s job of displaying fares, showing a route and and providing an electronic receipt on the cab ride. Not only will aggregators have to spend extra money on getting physical meters, the redundancy factor will be high on this one. This also feeds fuel to the fire of India ranking 134th out of 189 countries on the Ease of Doing Business in the world. A history of bad decisions: - In April, the Karnataka government seized over 30 cars from Ola and Uber for charging their users over the government decided rate of Rs 19.5/km. The same month, it banned surge pricing as a part of its rules for online cab aggregators in the state.…
