Cheats Don’t Issue Receipts

editorial:

The tourist season has begun and while this has brought much colour and excitement to the tourist spots, it has also returned the pernicious disposition of taxi services to start extracting usurious profits from commuters coming in from Siliguri and New Jalpaiguri. This is a clear case of cheating, and just because it is effected in West Bengal should not mean that Sikkim should ignore it. Commuters are now being charged as high as Rs. 400 per seat on an NJP-Gangtok journey which should cost them only Rs. 180. People returning home or tourists headed for Gangtok are in a hurry and in most cases resigned to getting fleeced at NJP anyway. The touts at the station make no efforts to explain the price hike to fuel prices or vehicle shortage and openly admit that this was demand-driven escalation. People pay up and arrive in Gangtok offended at the idea of having been cheated. The scenario is different in Gangtok which has learnt from the experience of rampant cheating by taxi and jeep operators during the bandh-frequented days of last year. Police personnel patrol the jeep stand on a regular basis, arriving as early as 7 in the morning and keeping a keen eye out to discourage cheating. This is apparently working and there have been no complaints thus far of cheating by vehicles moving out of stands here. The mainline taxi operators have also taken precautions to check against cheating of passengers. The deterrents have been working fine for Sikkim thus far. NJP and Siliguri are beyond Sikkim’s jurisdiction and the authorities there are obviously not concerned enough. When asked why Sikkim cannot do something to check this, one is told that either people do not lodge complaints or do not have ‘tickets’ to prove they have been cheated. On surface, this explanation closes the option of doing something, but on closer consideration, the excuse is not convincing.

Cheats do not, after all, ever issue receipts to attest what they have done. This does not mean that no action can be taken against them. All it will require is some proactive policing in which suspect vehicles [not everyone fleeces passengers] are stopped and the passengers asked what they have been charged. If it is higher than the prescribed fare, the driver needs to be booked. In the event that the passengers cannot produce a ticket, the driver still needs to be booked for ferrying passengers without tickets. The absence of ticket need not work in favour of the driver because then the passengers can claim any amount and seek a refund if they so desire. In most cases, passengers will not even be interested in a refund, but they will definitely support legal/ police action against the errant driver. The need for such proactive policing is not to fetch reimbursements for individual passengers, but to end a disturbing and routine practice of preying on travellers who have no option to get cheated because the authorities in West Bengal do not care. These, whether residents or tourists, are all passengers headed for Sikkim and especially in the latter case, their Sikkim experience begins in NJP or Siliguri itself. To try and protecting them from the opportunistic deceit of touts in Siliguri is something Sikkim owes them because they have chosen Sikkim over other holiday options. It goes without saying that the moment such policing is enforced, the jeep-gangs of NJP and Siliguri will gang up against Sikkim taxis and jeeps in a bid to exert indirect pressure on authorities here. They take recourse to such muscle-flexing often. That being the case, some consensus has to be established among the taxi associations in Sikkim, possible cooperation of cops beyond Rangpo sought and a crackdown effected. The domineering attitude of groups beyond Rangpo has succeeded too many times in staring down Sikkim’s protests and the State and its people continue suffering, sacrificing not just their image [when tourists get cheated], but also their self respect [when they allow it to continue in the fear of possible reprisals].