Bloody defeat

摘要

MUMBAI, INDIA'S financial capital, is famous for its appalling traffic. But since October 22nd its roads have been miraculously clear. The reason is that drivers for Uber and Ola, India's two biggest ride-hailing firms, have been on strike. Local newspapers estimated that 90% of the roughly 35,000 drivers in the city have stopped working. Mumbai's middle classes have been forced back onto trains, buses and rickshaws to get around, complaining vociferously. Protests against working conditions at ride-hailing firms are not new, nor restricted to India. But what makes Mumbai's strike different is that for once the firms seem likely to buckle. Drivers' unions said that 80% of their demands had been met, including one to raise pay rates. If so, this will be one of the first times that ride-sharing firms have had to negotiate as a result of industrial action. The drivers' complaints are straightforward. When Uber, an American firm, and Ola, from Mumbai, started operating five years ago, they paid drivers generously. Some made as much 100,000 rupees a month ($1,360), a fortune in India. But over the past two years pay has been cut drastically. And in recent months, rising petrol prices have made things worse. "They are looting us," says Nikhil Thakur, who has been driving for Ola for two years. His daily earnings have fallen from 3,000 rupees a day to less than 2,000. After paying for fuel, insurance and the cost of the loan for his car, he is barely breaking even. And because he still has to pay off what he has borrowed, he is trapped. "We bought cars on trust," he says, and "today we are dying."