Many migrant workers, especially those working in the northern states, continue to struggle as they find themselves stranded in the cities, with most work having dried up in the wake of Covid-19. The Supreme Court of India, has now directed the governments of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to “provide dry ration, adequate transport and set up community kitchens for benefit of the migrant labourers” who are in the National Capital Region, reported Bar and Bench.

The directions were issued by the two-judge bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and MR Shah who reportedly said, “Dry ration be provided to migrant workers in National Capital Region under Atma Nirbhar Bharat Scheme or any other scheme be provided by the Union of India, NCT of Delhi, State of UP and State of Haryana utilising the Public Distribution System prevalent in each State with effect from May, 2021.”

It is crucial to note that the SC has also said that the States authorities “shall not insist on an identity card for those migrant labourers who do not possess (the same) for the time being” while giving these dry rations. A “self-declaration made by the stranded migrant labourers,” should suffice and the dry ration must be given to them, said the Apex Court.

The SC added that the “NCT of Delhi, State of UP and State of Haryana (for the Districts included in the NCR) shall ensure that adequate transport is provided to stranded migrant labourers (in the National Capital Region) who want to return home.” It has directed that the “District Administration in coordination with Police Administration may identify such stranded migrant labourers and facilitate their transport either by road transport or train.”

According to the news report the court also asked the Centre to “consider issuing necessary instructions to the Ministry of Railways to take necessary and adequate measures to cater the need of migrant labourers”. The governments of Delhi, UP and Haryana have also been directed “to open community kitchen at well-advertised places (in the National Capital Region) for stranded migrant labourers so that they and their family members who are stranded could get two meals a day.”

So far, just like it was seen last year, it has mostly been the citizen groups, NGOs, religious congregations who have been offering food to the stranded migrant workers, as well as those stranded at home and ill with Covid-19. On Thursday the SC directed both the Central government as well as the State Governments of Delhi, UP and Haryana to file a reply suggesting means and measures by which they shall ease miseries of stranded migrant labourers in the Districts that are included in the National Capital Region.

According to B&B, this order was passed on an application by activists Harsh Mander, Anjali Bhardwaj and Jagdeep Chhokar, who had moved an urgent application before the SC seeking directions to ensure that migrant workers are not deprived of ration and food security and are able to travel back to their homes at nominal cost. The application was filed in the suo motu case initiated by the top court in 2020 to deal with migrant labourer crisis during the national lockdown, stated the news reports. According to the applicants even though states have been imposing “decentralised Covid-19 curfews” and lockdowns more cautiously this year, “they have offered little welfare support to working classes and migrants whose livelihoods are at sea once again.” They added that “a second exodus of migrant workers who are flocking train and bus terminals in urban centres in a bid to get back home,” has been triggered.

In 2020, SabrangIndia had chronicled how the Covid-19 pandemic brought to fore the dismal lives that our migrant workers lead. These heartbreaking stories of how they lived before the pandemic, how the lockdown changed their lives and what they’re doing now, may be read here.

A few days ago the Delhi High Court directed, Delhi government to formulate a scheme for migrant and unorganised sector workers under The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 and to ensure registration of migrant workers. The bench of Justice Manmohan and Justice Asha Menon took cognisance of the current crisis and stated that a structured response by the administration is required to provide relief to migrant workers.

The petition was filed seeking registration of all migrant workers of Delhi under Section 10 of The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 and to provide free medicines and medical facilities to them. The petition also seeks directions to the respondents to fulfil its obligations under The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 and to pay monies under the income transfer scheme to all migrant workers of Delhi.

The order may be read here:

Related:

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Maharashtra: HPC directs re-release of prisoners amid Covid-19
Death due to lack of timely medical aid is a violation of right to life: Patna HC
EC, courts and Government failed to see risk of polls during Covid-19: Allahabad HC

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‘Modernisation’ includes upgradation of weapons, communications systems including wireless devices and satellite networks, and the development of forensic infrastructure including labs and training of manpower, among other matters. Altogether, the utilisation of police forces’ modernisation budget was less than half (48%) of the funding available, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of government data.

“The central government releases grants for modernisation, which the state has to match. States don’t always release modernisation funds. This needs to be changed,” M N Singh, former Police Commissioner of Mumbai, told IndiaSpend.

Meanwhile, in this year’s budget, the allocation for ‘police infrastructure’–distinct from the modernisation allocation, and including such heads as maintenance of existing vehicles, basic weapons and telephones–actually declined by 2%.

As a result, police forces across India lack weapons and fundamental communications and transport infrastructure–267 police stations had no telephones and 129 had no wireless communication devices as of January 2017, as per the latest available data from the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD). There were eight vehicles for every 100 police personnel for responding to distress calls, patrolling and maintaining law and order in their jurisdictions.

The number of police stations functioning without wireless communication devices across India increased 231% from 39 in 2012 to 129 by the end of 2016. At the beginning of 2017, 273 police stations across the country did not possess a single transportation vehicle.

Communications infrastructure

More than half of the police stations without wireless communication devices were in Manipur (30), Jharkhand (22) and Meghalaya (18). Manipur ranked 28th among all states and union territories in terms of crime rate (121.9 per 100,000 people), when the worst possible rank was the 36th; Meghalaya ranked 29th (crime rate 120.4), and Jharkhand 30th (120.9).

Meanwhile, the number of police stations functioning without telephones declined 10% from 296 in 2012 to 269 in 2017.

More than 45% of the stations without telephones were in Uttar Pradesh (51), Bihar (41) and Punjab (30). Uttar Pradesh ranked 26th among all states and UTs with a crime rate of 128.7, Bihar 22nd with a crime rate of 157.4, and Punjab 24th with a crime rate of 137.

At the start of 2017, 51 police stations across the country had neither telephones nor wireless communication devices–down from 100 stations in 2012. More than half of these were located in the northeastern states of Manipur (15) and Meghalaya (12).

“With greater transport and communication equipment, the police can patrol a greater area more efficiently,” Singh said. “Wireless communication devices, mobiles, and vehicles are imperatives today. If anything happens, the police needs to be able to communicate well to address the issue. With better communication and transportation, one policeman can do as much work as ten policemen.”

Transport infrastructure

At the end of 2016, Indian police forces had, on average, one transport vehicle for 12.38 police personnel–an improvement from 15 per vehicle at the end of 2011.

Availability of transport infrastructure per 100 police personnel rose 19% from 6.78 by the end of 2011 to 8.08 in by the end of 2016, due largely to a 500% increase in the number of vehicles such as mine-proof vehicles, forensic vans, prison trucks and water tankers from 1,255 in 2011 to 7,536 in 2016.

The number of medium and light vehicles such as cars and jeeps increased only 21% from 76,088 in 2012 to 92,043 in 2016.

Yet, 273 police stations across the country had no transportation facilities by the end of 2016. Almost 90% of these were located in insurgency-hit Chhattisgarh (126), neighbouring Telangana (91), and Manipur (25), which also experiences internal conflict.

Uttar Pradesh, with 30 police personnel per vehicle, Mizoram with 22, and Himachal Pradesh with 18 had the fewest transport facilities per 100 police personnel in 2017.

Weapons shortage

Meanwhile, several state police forces operate with subpar weapons and communications infrastructure, as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found after examining five states from 2014 to 2018.

In Uttar Pradesh, in particular, of the initial demand of Rs 69.91 crore under the Modernisation of State Police Forces (MPF) scheme, only 55% or Rs 38.31 crore was allocated, and only Rs 32.99 crore (47% of the initial demand) was utilised, as per CAG’s 2017 audit of the state. Nearly half (48%) the police force was using weaponry that the home ministry had declared outdated over 20 years ago.

In Rajasthan, the CAG reported a 75% paucity of weapons in 2015 compared to the recommended quantum between 2009 and 2014. The state police required 15,884 weapons, of which they had received 3,962 (25%) at the time of the audit. Of these, 2,350, or 59% weapons were in storage and not distributed to the police stations.

Therefore, police stations in Rajasthan received only 14.7% of the requisite weapons, and faced a shortage of more than 85%.

The audit in West Bengal found a 71% weapons shortfall; Karnataka and Gujarat had a shortfall of 37% and 36%, respectively.

Erratic utilisation of modernisation budget

The modernisation budget, according to the BPRD, helps to upgrade police infrastructure–constructing people-friendly police stations and posts, and improving mobility, weaponry and communication equipment.

However, states’ utilisation of these funds has been erratic. Across India, over five years to 2017, less than half (48%) or Rs 13,720 crore ($1.9 billion) of the overall modernisation budget of Rs 28,703 crore ($4 billion) was utilised.

From 87% utilisation in 2014, all-India utilisation of modernisation funds fell to 14% in 2016, only to rise again to 75% in 2017.

Among states, Nagaland alone used all of its allocation for modernisation of Rs 1,172 crore through the financial year 2015-16, BPRD data show. Jammu and Kashmir spent around 45% of its modernisation budget, Rs 40 crore out of Rs 89.59 crore. Uttar Pradesh used 23% (Rs 26.31 crore) of its Rs 116.66 crore.

The modernisation of communications infrastructure is also incomplete in several states.

Uttar Pradesh spent 28% or Rs 56 crore of its budgetary allocation of Rs 137 crore to enhance its communications infrastructure during 2011-12 to 2015-16, CAG said.

In Karnataka, from 2013-14 to 2016-17, only Rs 6.93 crore was released against the initial demand of Rs 15.93 crore for the procurement of updated communications equipment, of which none were utilised as of 2018, another CAG report found. In 2018, all of the 43,636 communication sets (wireless devices, walkie-talkies, etc.) with the state police were past their recommended life-span.

“Policing now has become technology-centric. The police must modernise and expand its capabilities with respect to cyber-crime, currency flight, international trafficking, and other such crimes of enormous dimensions. We must also improve our capabilities with regard to cyber forensics, which is important today,” Singh said.

In 2002, India set up a satellite-based communication network called Police Telecommunication Network (POLNET) to enable faster communication between the police and paramilitary forces.

As of 2016, only 38 of 75 (51%) districts in Uttar Pradesh had functional POLNET infrastructure, CAG found.

In Gujarat, the entire POLNET system was either out of order or absent in October 2015, CAG found, and observed a 32% deficit in trained manpower to operate the relevant equipment, as of March 2015.

Gujarat spent none of the Rs 31.81 crore it received in 2013 and 2014 to upgrade its urban policing infrastructure. From 2009-10 to 2014-15, 73% of the funds Gujarat received for this purpose remained unspent.

(Mehta, a second-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago, is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Buses tend to be the mass transit option of choice for a city’s poorest inhabitants. For instance, the cheapest bus ticket in Delhi is Rs 5 for non AC buses and Rs 10 for AC buses, according to the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) website, compared to Rs 10 for the cheapest metro ticket; in Bengaluru, the minimum fare on the metro is Rs 10, compared to Rs 5 for the bus (general service).
 
Managed better than its metropolitan counterparts, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) lost money in 2013-14 and 2014-15, the only Indian metropolitan bus-transit system to make profits over the six years we considered.
 
Mumbai’s Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) with 4,094 buses and Delhi’s DTC with 4,564 buses, in 2015-16, made the largest net losses over six years to 2016: Rs 4,037 crore and Rs 14,950 crore, respectively.
 
Cumulative losses of Mumbai’s BEST and Delhi’s DTC are enough to buy 34,521 low-floor buses of the kind the DTC uses (each bus costs Rs 55 lakh) or 30,138 Certia buses, a model operated by the BEST, Rs 63 lakh each (at 2007-08 prices).
 
On average, between 2010 and 2016, the BMTC spent 35% of its budget on fuel, compared to 19% in Mumbai and 11% in Delhi, indicating that it was using its money on its core function–keeping buses running; of the eight metropolitan bus-transit systems, BMTC used its fleet best with 91% of the buses in use across the six years.
 
Chennai’s public bus system, the Metro Chennai Transport Corporation Limited, was next in spending the largest proportion of its budget (29%) on fuel, also indicating that it was better at keeping its buses on the road than the other six metropolitan systems. Chennai’s average fleet utilisation rate was 86%, behind Bengaluru (91%) and Chandigarh (89%).
 
Chennai and Bengaluru also reported the best fuel efficiency (4.7 km/litre and 3.9 km/litre, respectively). This could perhaps explain why they are more profitable than others despite the cost of fuel, which tends to be higher in the south than the north.
 
Bengaluru depends on buses
With 8.4 million people living over 709 sq km, Bengaluru still depends overwhelmingly on its buses, although some pressure has been relieved by a seven-year-old 41-station, two line 42.3-km metro-rail system. In 2015-16, the metro carried 16.8 million people–about 46,000 people a day–whereas the BMTC carried 144 million–about 365,000 a day–almost eight times more, that year.
 
Mumbai’s 12.4 million people–more than 20 million in the larger urban agglomeration, some of which are independent municipal corporations, such as Thane and Navi Mumbai–live across 4,355 sq km (Greater Mumbai, including Thane and Navi Mumbai) and depend primarily on a 135-station, 465-km suburban commuter-rail system, supplemented by a four-year-old 12-station, 11.4-km metro rail line; four more metro lines are under construction. The city’s suburban lines carry close to 8 million passengers every day, compared to the BEST, which carried 1.06 million, according to 2015-16 government data. The only working metro line carried 335,000 passengers every day in 2017-18.
 
Delhi’s 11 million people–16.3 million in the National Capital Territory, which sprawls across 1,484 sq km–rely on a 16-year-old, 214-station, 296-km metro network with six fully operational and two partially operational lines. In 2015-16, the Delhi metro ferried around 2.6 million passengers whereas the DTC ferried around 3 million passengers per day
 

Source: Review of the performance of state road transport undertakings, ministry of road transport and highways
 
Where do bus-transit systems spend their money?
We found that the biggest contributors to bus-transit system’s costs were staff and fuel/lubricant-related expenditure–ranging, on average, from 27-61% and 13-27%, respectively, between 2010-16. Despite being the least profitable system, the DTC, on average, had the lowest percentage of staff costs as well as the lowest percentage of fuel/ lubricant costs, 27.78% and 10.32%, respectively
 

Source: Review of the performance of state road transport undertakings, ministry of road transport and highways
 
BEST and the Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC) had the highest proportion of staff costs–60% and 62% respectively–whereas, on average, BMTC and MCTC had the highest proportion of fuel costs– 35% and 28%–respectively. In 2015-16, BEST was the second-largest employer with 35,705 employees (after BMTC with 36,474); the CSTC stood at 7th with 4,998 employed. However, in 2015-16, BEST and DTC had higher staff costs–Rs 1,689 crore and Rs 1,475 crore, respectively–than BMTC (Rs 1,096 crore), even though BMTC employed 769 more people than BEST and 3,610 more than DTC.
 
This could indicate that the DTC (established in 1948) and BEST (established in 1947) are facing legacy costs, as they are almost 70 years old; BMTC (established in 1997) is 20 years old, in its current avataar (its forerunner, the Bangalore Transport Service, started operations in 1962 after the nationalisation of the Bangalore Transport Corporation, which had been running buses since 1940).
 

Source: Review of the performance of state road transport undertakings, ministry of road transport and highways
 
Mumbai’s overstaffed BEST decided in December 2017 to scrap 4,894 posts of conductors, bus drivers, mechanics and cleaners to cut staff costs and dispense with redundant posts. BEST employed 34,174 people in 2015-16, second only to BMTC that employed 35,554 people over the same year but with 2,354 more buses.
 
DTC is the biggest borrower
The DTC may save on fuel and staff–fuel saving, as we said, is not an indicator of efficiency–but it more than compensates through spending the largest proportion of its budget on interest payments, an indication that it borrows money to keep running.
 
Over the six years to 2016, the DTC’s interest payments as a percentage of its expenditure ranged from 46% to 74%, compared to single digits for other bus-transit system. The DTC has been subsidised by the Delhi government for 20 years with its last-known cumulative debt at Rs 11,676 crore for the financial year 2014-15, according to a 2016 Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) report. DTC’s revenue the same year was Rs 1,113 crore, approximately 10% of its debt.
 
“Despite getting bailout packages since 1996, DTC is unable to repay its debts,” Amit Bhatt, director of Integrated Urban Transport, at the World Resources Institute, a think-tank, told the Hindustan Times in October 2017. “An alternative source of finance needs to be found (for the DTC).”
 

Source: Review of the performance of state road transport undertakings, ministry of road transport and highways
 
The need to increase fares and rationalise routes
Buses are, as we said, the transit system of choice for the poorest commuters in Indian cities, but the losses they incur stem from a failure to raise fares.
 
In Delhi, for instance, the fare is supposed to be revised twice a year in line with the consumer price index, but that is often delayed due to political pressures. DTC had the lowest fares among all metropolitan bus transit services, with tickets starting from Rs 5.
 
The DTC last witnessed a fare hike in 2009, the cost of the cheapest ticket rising from Rs 3 for the first 4 km to Rs 5 for the first 3 km. This hike came at time when the cost of compressed natural gas (CNG) was Rs 19 per kg and outstanding debt was Rs 6,500 crore. The CNG price was Rs 42 per kg in May 2018.
 
In other words, DTC ticket prices rose 166% from while fuel costs rose 221% in nine years. The Delhi metro, in comparison, witnessed two fare hikes in 2017 itself.
 
In Mumbai, none of the BEST’s 18 new routes since 2013 make profits and accumulated Rs 52 crore in losses over five years to 2018, the DNA reported on June 15, 2018.
 
Bus-transit systems also require periodic “route rationalisation”, the process of reassessing routes and stops. The DTC’s last route-rationalisation study was nine years ago in 2009. Since then, new roads and routes have been added, so the lack of reassessing routes pushes up costs and requires fare hikes.
 
Many routes are not inherently profit-making, since they are supposed to serve underserved communities but as BMTC’s example shows, laying out a route that covers both profitable and unprofitable areas can make a difference.
 
“Some (BMTC) routes even go as far as connecting peri urban areas and adjoining suburbs; something which BEST could not do,” Madhav Pai, India Director for the Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities, a think-tank told IndiaSpend, because Thane and Navi Mumbai have their own bus services.
 
How BMTC does better than the rest
“BMTC is a more modern organisation and has fewer legacy costs to deal with, as opposed to BEST and DTC, which have been around for decades,” said Pai.
 
BMTC has “superior marketing and supply chain strategies” than the other seven bus-transit systems in our analysis, said the Ross Centre’s Pai. For instance, its depots offer advertising and its top-end buses are brought in cheaper, bulk rates from Swedish bus-maker Volvo, which has a factory outside Bengaluru.
 
“Furthermore BMTC has low staff costs because a lot of work is outsourced, which means that there is less scope for redundant labour,” said Pai. “Another area BMTC really stood out was depots; they are in accessible locations with more facilities, such as rest houses for drivers.”
 
The DTC also wants more depot space to acquire more CNG buses but is unable to do so due to a lack of land adds Pai
 
Delhi needs 460 acres of land to accommodate its 5,583 buses but no more than 257 acres are available, according to a May 2016 environment pollution control authority report.
 
(Pallapothu, an Msc student at the Symbiosis School of Economics, Pune, is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 
 

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