The familiar red buses are back on Mumbai’s streets. Mumbaiites heaved a collective sigh of relief when the employees of Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) decided to end their eight-day long strike — the longest-ever —on Wednesday with some prodding from the Bombay high court (HC).

The unions representing 35,000 to 40,000 workers are not completely satisfied with the outcome; their demands for better wages and benefits for workers have only been partially fulfilled; their demand to merge the BEST budget with that of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is on the table but the outcome is unclear.

These are band-aid solutions. They will not address the endemic problem of the BEST, which is to run an efficient and affordable public bus network in one of the world’s busiest cities; and to operate a network driven by purpose, not merely profit. Mumbai has India’s best public bus system by any reckoning but it has not been treated with the care it deserves.

This calls for long-term commitment from the BMC and the state government to ensure that the BEST not only survives its financial crisis but thrives in the years to come. That’s assuming that the powers-that-be want it to. It also calls for a plan in which the bus network continues to be a vital part of the city’s public transport grid. It may carry around 25-29 lakh daily commuters that it does now but how would it connect to the railway and Metro networks? What role would it play in Mumbai’s urban mobility in the next decade? What is the role of its employees in this plan?

Indeed, the BEST has been in financial doldrums for a few years now. The reasons for this are manifold and complex, but suffice to say it has been a victim of many factors. Among them, internal mismanagement and wilful neglect are important. What is needed now is a comprehensive and independent report on how the BEST piled up its losses; a White Paper which would also fix responsibility. What is also needed is a clear recovery and revival plan; not fragmentary “solutions” like wet leasing of private buses that municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta has been pushing for. The current fate of the BEST is a comment on how politicians have presided over its decline. The way the strike was dealt with told us a great deal about internecine politics. With the immense power the Shiv Sena has over the BEST sub-committee and the standing committee in the BMC, and its majority in the BMC, it still could not prevent the strike or have it called off earlier. The BJP and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis behaved as if the BEST was Sena’s problem alone.

In its budget for 2018-19, the cash-strapped BEST requested its parent organisation, the BMC, for ₹350-₹500 crore. The BMC, in its annual budget of a shade over ₹27,000 crore, did not provide the amount. Instead, it allocated ₹1,500 crore for the ambitious and politically-backed coastal road. It even set aside ₹100 crore to develop a cycling track – which also is needed – but BEST was wilfully ignored. More than 60% of Mumbaiites still rely on public transport for their daily commute, never mind that car ownership rose by nearly 50% in the last six to eight years. What would it take, for example, to provide an integrated ticketing system across all transport modes; for information and LED indicators at bus stops informing commuters of routes and waiting time; for buses to have GPS and automated vehicle location system; for traffic management which gives priority to buses; for re-drawing of routes?

Studies have demonstrated that larger the city size, higher the percentage of urban trips served by public transport. Mumbai’s railway network carries the bulk of the load, the Metro network will take some of this in the future, but its bus network cannot be replaced or privatised. Do politicians want us to see “a day when there will be no BEST buses” as the unions’ counsel told the HC and its depots - prime real estate - in the hands of builders?

If not, this is the time to chart out that revival plan.

First Published: Jan 17, 2019 00:23 IST