Collector Bro: The quixotic 'thallals' of a civil servant by Prasanth Nair

Author:Prasanth Nair [Nair, Prasanth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Compassionate India
Published: 2021-03-31T18:30:00+00:00

COLLECTOR BRO

“loss”. So we invited the Bus Operators Associations and trade

unions to discuss the possibilities of how the system as a whole

can absorb the perceived losses instead of a select few operators

having to incur all the loss[44].

The project seeks to allow the students to travel

like a VIP in the bus as the ‘opportunity cost’ is taken

care of through Savari GiriGiri. Smart cards that allow

them to travel hassle-free across the district were dis-

tributed to the kids. These travel cards could be topped

up in advance, minimising cash transactions.

It was agreed that with the help of smart cards, the bus

owners association will have an understanding of the number

of students who have travelled with them and the potential loss

is absorbed by the association which is further divided amongst

individual bus operators. In other words, the “perceived loss” is

equally shared by equally sharing the “perceived profit” if these

students had not travelled in that bus. Bus Operators also now

have the option to keep donation boxes through which they can

raise funds from the public on bus routes with more educational

institutions, hence making up for the ‘absorbed losses’ as well.

A win-win situation we believe that brings in a feel-good to all

stakeholders. We even got on board a banking partner, willing to

freely sponsor the ticketing machines.

However, it was another story that the staff and trade

unions of the workers who ply the buses were not in favour of

such a reform. Most of the buses were renegade Frankensteins

controlled by the workers themselves and there were wide-

spread anomalies in the daily collection. Digitisation and direct

bank collection would ensure that the bus owners get accurate

figures. This was not something that the unions wanted. Some

of the bus owners were also not happy to have a transparent

accounting system. This meant that we had to adopt a carrot-

97

COLLECTOR BRO

and-stick policy with a considerable amount of patience and

perseverance. They didn’t have any legal compulsion that made

such an arrangement mandatory. A state-level legal provision is

necessary. That a day will come when this would be understood

and adopted across the state is of no doubt - our children deserve

to go to school with a positive mindset, and their dignity intact.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.