What tourists need to know

On Friday, after a fortnight of intense debate about draft guidelines on app-based taxis notified by Goa’s transport department, Chief Minister Pramod Samant said that external cab giants such as Uber and Ola would not be allowed to operate in the state.

Though the Goa Transport Aggregator Guidelines, 2025, offers a regulatory framework for app-based taxi and bike taxi operators, Samant said that it is “meant to regulate the existing taxi system, not to permit new companies”.

The controversy about the guidelines brings into focus the polarised opinions about the taxi system in a state that earns just over 16% of its revenues from tourism.

The guidelines have been welcomed both by residents and tourists. They cite a variety of reasons for supporting app-based taxis: unregulated, inflated fares by Goan taxi operators, a shortage of vehicles when they are needed, the seemingly whimsical behaviour of taxi operators, among them.

In fact, some have fixed the blame for what they believe is the decline of Goan tourism on the so-called taxi mafia.

But the state’s taxi drivers are up in arms. They oppose the idea of a business that they have built and sustained over years being handed over to large corporations.

To understand fares are high in the state, it is essential to realise that the taxi business in Goa is not homogeneous. There are those who operate at airports, black-and-yellow taxis that run from railway stations, taxis that queue up outside hotels and the ones that wait for customers at designated taxi stands. These taxis pick up passengers from point A and drop them off at point B.

It is an unwritten rule that after they drop off a passenger, they will not pick another ride as they return to their point of origin. This convention ensures that they do not step on the business of drivers at the other location. To make this practice viable, they build a 50% return fare into such trips.

This reflects the cooperative nature of a business in which even one taxi operator’s greed for rides outside his territory could break a chain of trust and impinge on the livelihood of others.

Why do their rates appear higher than those of app-based aggregators in large cities? First, app-based aggregators do not operate on fair pricing models. Their rates are heavily subsidised by the venture capital they have at their disposal. They burn this cash to depress fares – and annihilate the local competition.

Such predatory techniques allow them to eventually establish a monopoly. This coerces local cab drivers to sign up with these aggregators or forces them out of business altogether.

Secondly, distances between destinations in Goa are longer than in most cities – but the journey often does not take quite as much time. For instance, when I travel from my home in Ponda to Panjim city, I cover the 30-km-odd distance in around 45 minutes. On a recent visit to Mumbai, I covered 8.5 km in 45 minutes.

This could make me wonder why I am being charged Rs 1,200 for a 45-minute ride in Goa that would seem to cost Rs 500 in Mumbai.

It is also important to understand that in Goa, taxi fares vary according to both distance and type of vehicle. A seven-seater Ertiga cannot charge the same amount as a four-seater Wagon R. These rates are notified by the state transport department. Taxi owners have no say in deciding them. The lack of standardised fares is a failure of enforcement.

The introduction of app-based aggregators will not necessarily bring in standardised fares precisely because these apps thrive on an unregulated pricing model. They enforce surge pricing, which means that in situations of high demand or adverse weather conditions, fares escalate substantially.

Last month’s guidelines make it mandatory for aggregators to pay the taxi drivers the fare notified by the transport department. Any commission and the profit for the aggregator will have to be levied on top of this fare. Unless the aggregator subsidises the fare, rides would actually become more expensive for customers.

Amidst this discussion, what stands out is the characterisation of Goan taxi drivers as a “taxi mafia”’, a label that generates a preemptive bias towards them.

Tourists often resent them because the drivers control their mobility. Some mistakenly believe that drivers want to sit idle through the day, making as few trips as they can but charging hefty fares to suffice for a day’s earnings.

This is a perception tourists develop as they observe drivers who operate outside hotels and resorts seemingly doing nothing as they wait for fares.

Drivers follow a queue system and assign incoming requests serially to those in the line. There is no guarantee when their turn will come. Taxi operators say that getting even one trip a day is considered lucky.

This waiting period makes it look like drivers are lazy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Imagine yourself in a situation where you have to provide for your family, pay monthly installments for a car loan, taxes and deductions of all kinds, and save for a rainy day.

Add to that irregular working hours, rising inflation and the overall uncertainty that comes with unstable income. The last thing you would want to do is not work.

What Goa’s taxi drivers – many of them from Bahujan communities – have evolved is a cooperative model of doing business that is built around the community. These values are alien, and perhaps detrimental to capitalist methods of doing business.

It is not that Goa does not have app-based aggregators already. There are at least two apps that are currently operating. They were handed a monopoly over the Goan taxi market on a platter.

Predictably, these apps have failed because demand in Goa is not as intense as it is in large cities, and is unevenly distributed. The algorithms of the apps cannot adapt to Goa’s humane ways of doing business.

Kaustubh Naik is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

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