Telangana’s autorickshaw drivers’ cry for fare play as promises run on empty

Telangana auto drivers protest for fare hike, facing financial strain, unkept promises, and demands for government intervention.

What does it take for a government to hear the anguished cries of its people — tears, desperate pleas, protests, or, perhaps, a powerful leader raising the torch of their fight? Struggling under mounting debt and unkept promises, autorickshaw drivers in Telangana recently flooded the streets of Hyderabad to draw attention to their woes. Stepping into their cause, Bharat Rashtra Samithi legislator and former minister K.T. Rama Rao emphasised their plight by driving an electric autorickshaw, adorned with placards that read: ‘Auto Annalu Aatmahatyalu Government Hatyalu’ (auto driver suicides are government murders).

While all attempts to highlight the drivers’ sufferings have left the government unmoved, the weight of their pleas for survival collides with passengers’ cries for fare tranparency and service quality, laying bare a conflict of needs and neglect.

Autorickshaw union leaders maintain that the Mahalakshmi scheme, an election guarantee of the Congress government offering free travel for women in State-run buses, has eaten into their income. Several drivers, they claim, have taken their own lives under the crushing financial strain.

Yet, for well over a decade, successive governments have turned a blind eye to the long overdue increase in the minimum fare and fare per kilometre — both stagnant at ₹20 and ₹11, respectively. The constant rise in fuel prices has done little to prompt any meaningful change.

While passengers complain about drivers not adhering to the fare meter, drivers decry the soaring fuel costs.

“In 2014, a government order fixed the minimum fare and per kilometre fare. After that, we all know how much the prices of petrol, diesel, CNG, and LPG have shot up. But the fares were not increased by any government,” says A. Sathi Reddy, a functionary of the Telangana Auto Drivers Joint Action Committee. “How much will the driver earn, and how much will he have left after completing trips,” he asks.

At a recent protest, auto drivers’ unions reiterated their demand for a fare hike — a minimum fare of ₹40 and per kilometre fare of ₹25. They argue that this increase is not only fair but necessary for improving their livelihoods. In another protest, they urged the Congress government to honour its pre-poll promise of providing ₹12,000 annually to each driver.