Uber Banned in India for Right Reasons

In India, because we were ruled by corrupt parties/politicians in the past, we developed an attitude which said, "if govt has done something, it must be wrong." This theory explains why as soon as we heard about any decision made by govt, our first reaction was, "it is wrong". After recent crime in Delhi by its driver, govt banned Uber. Since Delhi is under central control, opposition got chance to target BJP/Modi govt over it. But if we care to read the news, Uber was banned for right reasons.

Uber does not even have a call center. No emergency number passengers can contact. Also no police verification for drivers. No permit for rent-a-cab. Uber also violated RBI's guidelines on its payment service. The only problem is that it was not banned before and banned only after something horrible happened.

Delhi is too important a place for Govt not to be knowing about this service. They should have banned it from the beginning until it complied with the rules. And we should thank govt for taking actions like these - if govt continues like this, all companies will become responsible in maintaining safety services for us. This ban shows, that govt is decisive, it took big decision to ban companies because of one incident of rape. In the past what was govt's attitude? "It is only one case", "it is exceptional case" etc etc..  and now? We shall ban a company if they fail in maintaining safety features for women. We should note this change in attitude by the govt and we should appreciate it.

And if we think that only a poor and uneducated country banned it in one state - we should know that others like Spain have done it too for same reasons:

Uber banned in Spain & Thailand, sued in Portland, hassled in Rio

On Tuesday, both Thailand and Spain banned Uber. You know the drill by now: The company’s drivers don’t have taxi permits and/or insurance, and the authorities have had an earful from furious cab drivers who do have to pay for such things. Yesterday it was authorities in Delhi that told the firm to stop operating locally, after an Uber driver allegedly raped a passenger. Meanwhile, the cities of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and Portland, Oregon, have also told the firm to stay off the roads (via police complaint and lawsuit respectively), and an Uber driver in San Francisco has been charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter for driving over and killing a six-year-old girl.

https://gigaom.com/2014/12/09/uber-banned-in-spain-thailand-sued-in-portland-hassled-in-rio/

Also at: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30395093

Also, I wonder why we (people like us) also did not notice the potential threat. Many people in our office were using this service; they were giving away some code to get Rs 300 discount on Uber app; no one thought that absence of an emergency number or even a call center could be security threat... Uber's marketing was so strong that people did not doubt it or expected anything wrong from Uber's part.. Media was busy writing articles about Uber's Mercs and BMWs and at the most about its payment service which saved customers' credit card numbers (as if we did not want to burn calories in swiping our cards every time). If this is to indicate, we must do safety audit in many other sectors and services too...

Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect views of any organization author is associated with.