India is not a safe country for foreign tourists to visit and move about freely. A number of cases of rape, killing and looting have taken place with foreign tourists visiting our country. All these incidents put us to shame. It has created a bad reputation and is likely to adversely affect the number of tourists visiting our country. In many cases of crime against the foreign tourists, the culprits have not been traced which is adding injury to insult.
In many cases, the taxi drivers are reportedly involved in crime against foreigners. The Government has introduced the pre-paid taxi system in which the antecedents of a taxi driver are known to the police and they could be caught and subjected to interrogation. But all tourists do not use the prepaid taxis and pre paid taxis are available only at the International Airport. Therefore the Government has come out with a scheme of introducing chip enabled taxis. The tourist on arrival at the Indian Airport would be given a card of the taxi that is allotted to him and this chip added card contains all the particulars about the driver and the route he takes to ferry the passenger and the destination where he drops the passenger. This will maintain a record of the roads through which the tourist’s taxi passes and the destination where the passenger disembarks.
This is not a bad idea and we feel that it should help in protecting the tourist from being exploited either by overcharged payment of taxi fare or mishandling of the passenger. But the point is that without digital taxi, still the traffic police have complete information about the taxi drivers. If in the case of an assault on a passenger the police intend to make full inquiry and investigation it can do that within days. It is the intention, the efficiency and the resources at the disposal of the police that are of prime importance in preventing the crime against foreign tourists. Those norms should be strengthened and implemented without hesitation.
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