'My life is spent in this car': Uber drives its Indian workers to despair.

Pedro_P

After promises of high earnings, fare cuts and increased commission have left drivers with car loans they can’t pay off.

Uber and Ola drivers stand next to their parked vehicles during a protest in New Delhi in 2017. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
▼ Moham Kumar wolfs down a few spoonfuls of spiced black chickpeas for lunch between passengers.
It is 3pm. Kumar has been on the roads of the Indian capital since 9am without a break. He will continue driving until 9pm or 10pm. This is his routine, seven days a week. “When I get home my daughter is asleep. My life is spent in this car,” he says.
Kumar is an Uberdriver in Mumbai. But the dream he and thousands of other drivers were sold by the company has turned sour.
The past few weeks have seen Uber drivers – and those who drive for Ola, the domestic cab aggregator company – on the streets protesting about their conditions, calling their work “slavery”, and demanding that the government intervene.
Uber entered the Indian market in 2013. Kumar was one of many poor, semi-literate Indians who left their jobs to join up, taking out a loan for a car, and expecting to significantly increase their earning potential. “They gave us the impression that the sky was the limit in terms of money. They said what we earned all depended on us. I was told by an Uber agent that some drivers were earning up to 90,000 rupees [£1,015] a month,” says Kumar.

Moham Kumar, an Uber driver in New Delhi. Photograph: Amrit Dhillon
He became a “driver-partner”, in Uber parlance, in early 2016. By working about 10 hours a day, he was able to manage his monthly instalment on the car loan, the cost of fuel and maintenance, and enjoy savings of around 50,000 rupees – an astronomical sum for any Indian driver. “For the first time in my life, I could put some money away,” he says.
The crash, when it came at the end of 2016, was brutal. “Uber reduced the rate per km charged to passengers from 10 rupees [11p] to just six rupees. We used to get an incentive of 2,000 rupees every day once we had completed a dozen rides. This was cut back to just once a week for doing 40-50 rides. And they hiked their commission from 20% to 25%,” says New Delhi Uber driver Naresh Kumar (no relation).
Certainly, my ride is cheap. The 5km journey in an air-conditioned WagonR costs me 90 rupees – around the same as a hot, windy, uncomfortable ride in an auto-rickshaw. Indian passengers are thrilled with the low fares.
But these rates – along with the other measures – are a disaster for drivers. They cannot reduce the size of their monthly car repayments. Those who want to sell the car and get out cannot do so as the resale value won’t be enough to repay the loan. And while the ride rates have fallen, the price of petrol and diesel have gone up.
“They are locked into a form of bondage,” says Gautam Mody, secretary of the New Trade Union Initiative, a relatively new national organisation. While many drivers angrily accuse Uber of making false promises, even “guarantees” about income, Mody concedes it is probably unlikely that the San Francisco-based company promised specific numbers in its advertising. What isn’t known is how its agents projected the work. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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vikash123vt

Indian govt should look into it and ensure that rights of drivers are honored .