Demonetisation: Kerala taxi drivers grin and bear it

Thiruvananthapuram: Few have been hiring taxis, but drivers seem to be grinning and bearing it. Taxi and auto drivers said they don’t mind receiving phased-out currencies. The number of people hiring them was so little that they didn't mind standing in the queues at the bank. After two straight days of no work, when someone hired his car on Friday, M. K. Nanukuttan was so relieved. On any other day, he would have got at least two trips.

One would expect him to be annoyed at the suddenly forced austerity. But he supports the initiative, as he feels it will unveil black money stashed by taxi aggregators. “They ply at extremely low rates. How is that possible They definitely would be having lots of unaccounted money. It will help bring them to book,” he says. The ones who were on the road on the day the news was announced got to know about the decision at petrol pumps, and how.

P. Venugopalan Nair says, “Petrol pumps were not ready to part with Rs 100 notes. They told us that either we have to fill for all '500 or nothing.” Most of them said that the issue of having no currencies would not last for more than ten days. “The government’s initiative is rather good. It is not going to affect honest people like us,” says Murugan A., an auto driver.