A flawed ban on bike taxis
Shankar Nag’s Auto Raja and Rajinikanth’s Baashha turned the figure of the autorickshaw driver into a cultural icon – and larger than life. But between cinema and the civic reality of today, that image has changed, for worse.
The deeper truth is political. For decades, autos have operated at the intersection of unions and political nexus, electoral arithmetic, informal finance, and street-level impunity. In cities like Bengaluru and Chennai, auto passengers are used to exorbitant flat fares, demanded without any care for regulations or policing. In this context, the emergence of bike taxis – affordable, digital, and widely preferred by commuters – has been viewed more as a threat to the old order.
