The worst of BEST: Strike by 36,000 employees indicates the deep mess

Crumbling under massive financial strain, the 112-year-old Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking seems to be staring into the abyss. The strike by 36,000 BEST employees on August 7 was one of the indications of its weak financial position. Over the years there have been several mistakes that the BEST has committed which has brought it to this situation.

The organisation is seeing a downfall not just because of the poor services provided, but also due to the lack of punctuality in the bus schedule, and majority of the fleet being filled with rickety buses. A senior government official agreed that the BEST is in a deep mess. It is not just the commuting experience, but also the numbers which are indicating towards its failure. From 43 lakh to 28 lakh daily passengers in nine years reveals the sorry state of affairs at BEST.

Fleet of buses

In 2008-2009, the BEST decided to expand its fleet of buses, and over 4000 buses were introduced with a promise to compete with other city-based bus transport systems. The BEST buses ferried 43.80 lakh passengers every day, which was a major contribution and competition to other modes of public transport like suburban local trains, taxis and autorickshaws. Metro and monorail were only in the offing. 

The demand for BEST buses was good with each bus carrying 1275 passengers per day, and they earned Rs 6600 although they spent Rs 10,400 per bus each day. In the next two years the Undertaking added several hundreds of buses, and they took the fleet size to 4700 buses in 2010-11.

The sudden surge in number of buses flooded the roads; their daily trips now touching 70,900 and even the income per bus rose to Rs 6,800. “But the daily passengers fell by a lakh. It was around the same time when the share auto rickshaws and taxis slowly began to pick up,” said another BEST official.

It was the last time that the BEST ever increased their bus fleet. In 2012-13, the BEST cut down the fleet by 400 buses, most of which had become old by then.

Not just that, their numbers were also being curtailed to control the operational cost as the daily income-cost ratio had gone up. By 2013-14, the losses for running a bus each day was over Rs 6000 while the daily number of passengers dropped to 35 lakhs.

“It is sad that the government is taking little interest in BEST, and are concentrating on metro rail,” said Ashok Datar, Transport expert and chairman, MESN.

“Once upon a time each bus in a day used to ferry 1275 passengers. Now the same bus ferries barely 860 people,” said the BEST official. This is the reason why presently only 28 lakh people use the BEST bus.

Birth and death of AC buses

A decade back the BEST decided to introduce AC buses — the first of its kind for Mumbaikars. “The first lot of purple-coloured air-conditioned buses were introduced,” said a BEST official.

As per plans, in 2008, the Undertaking was supposed to procure 284 AC buses to add to its fleet. Barring a few incidents where the entire AC bus caught fire and was charred, the buses had a high demand to the extent that the BEST sent 20 of its AC buses to the airport authorities.

“At that time, the BEST buses were carrying at least 84,000 passengers every day in these AC buses. This trend continued for 3-4 years. Just before it was scrapped, barely 8,000 passengers were using it per day,” said Ravi Raja, member, BEST Committee member. 

The BEST spent up to Rs 55-Rs 65 lakh to procure each AC bus. Over the years the complaints regarding its movement, acceleration, technical failures on flyovers and malfunctioning ACs rose substantially. In 2011, the BEST proposed to blacklist these buses as it had become a liability for the Undertaking. In the last two years, 75-80 per cent of its AC bus fleet have been simply parked inside the bus depots. Sources said that over the years they incurred losses to the tune of Rs 600 crore on these Kinglong AC buses. It was such a state of apathy that the BEST failed to auction these buses to the private operators even for Rs 1 lakh each. Finally earlier this May, they condemned the entire AC bus fleet as it went into extinction.

Rising debt

Earlier this month, the BEST Workers Union went on a hunger strike at the Wadala depot demanding that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) — the parent organsiation of BEST – takes responsibility for the pathetic financial mess of the Undertaking. The employees led by various unions went on a one-day strike, which partly paralysed the city.

Since March 2017 the Undertaking had failed to give salaries on time, which is between the second and eighth of the month. In the same month, 42,000 employees got their salaries after the 20th, and this continued even in April this year. 

Every month the BEST pays Rs 184 crore to its employees. It also includes the gratuity and pensions amounting to over Rs 100 crore. This comes at a time when the BEST is under severe financial crises as they posted losses to the tune of Rs 565 crore in this year’s annual budget. They have taken several short-term loans from different financial institutions and banks.

The Undertaking took a loan of Rs 1600 crore from the BMC. “The BEST was told that this amount would not be charged any interest but then gradually an interest component as high as 10 per cent was levied. This is more than what banks charge us,” said a senior government official.

The BEST asked the BMC to convert the loan amount as grant, which the BMC has not agreed to. “Even now the administration owes Rs 600 crore to the BMC and Rs 1700 crore to other financial institutions and banks from whom they have taken money,” said S Ganacharya, BEST Committee member.

In fact the BEST is borrowing monthly loans of Rs 200 crore from various banks to pay off interest on loans taken from banks and to the BMC. The BEST has been trying to cut short the expenditure by wet-lease of buses, which has been recently proposed. In which case, the buses will belong to a private company and the BEST will pay for its operations. Over the years, the Undertaking’s losses now stand at Rs 2500 crore.

Bus upgrade

Nearly a decade ago, the khaki clad conductor used to punch the colour-coded paper ticket but now he issues an electronic ticket using a handheld machine. There were hand-rolled destination indicators which has now been upgraded to e-destination boards. But given the current financial crunch, the plan to get 303 new single decker buses has been dismissed. Now the Undertaking has procured only 180-odd buses at a cost of Rs 100 crore. 

The plan instal GPS systems in the buses too have not taken any concrete shape.  

Punctuality of buses is a major issue. Commuters typically wait for 20-30 minutes for a bus too arrive. “There is a mistaken belief that something like BRTS will eat away one lane. In fact if buses get a dedicated lane then their punctuality and speed would improve. People will also ditch their private cars and two-wheelers,” added Datar.

The bus stops too were supposed to see a revamp. The Undertaking has also done a shoddy job of providing information about travel distance to passengers via SMS.

New competitors

At present, Mumbai has 30.69 lakh registered vehicles that ply on the roads. Of these, there are 14 lakh two-wheelers and 10 lakh private cars. “The severe rush in local trains and non-punctual buses are the primary reasons for this increase. Moreover the East-West suburban connectivity by road has also improved,” said an official from Transport department.

Over the last couple of years the yellow plated ‘T-permit’ vehicles, which are now operating as Uber and Ola, have played a big role in further ruining the BEST’s plan of running AC buses. In 2009-10 there were only 17.67 lakh vehicles on the roads of Mumbai. 

Every day around 1000 new vehicles are registered at the RTOs of Tardeo, Andheri, Wadala and Borivali. No remedial measures have been taken to curtail the number of vehicles on the roads. This is affecting the bus’s punctuality.

Exploit assets

The BEST should not simply depend on their bus revenues. “We are looking at increasing the fares for long distance bus routes and keeping the base fare the same. But nothing is decided, yet,” said a BEST official on condition of anonymity.

The BEST needs to exploit the huge cache of land available with them at bus depots and power substations. They have given away part of their bus depots at Versova, Mahim and few others to private players and real estate developers, but then there are allegations that these aren’t as per market rates.

The electricity supply department is a profit making wing for the BEST — that supplies power to 10 lakh people in south Mumbai between Colaba-Sion/Mahim. “Earlier the Transport wing was being cross-subsidised by the electricity Supply wing. And so we managed to balance the losses,” said a former BEST employee.

In fact there was also a component called ‘transport cess’ that was levied in electricity bills of the 10 lakh consumers. However, people and even political parties objected to it on grounds that even the ‘high profile’ section of the society who don’t travel in BEST buses are paying for it. Finally it was scrapped and transport cess was removed. This further affected the Undertaking.

Now, the only way that BEST can exist with healthy financial condition is the merger of budgets with that of the cash cow BMC. “The BMC and the state government should help BEST come out of this mess,” said 
Anil Kokil, Chairman, BEST Committee.