Bombay Taxi - Kaali Peeli

 

The Bombay Taxi – Kaali Peeli

The Bombay Taxi also known as ‘Kaali Peeli’ is an icon and lifeline of Mumbai city. It runs 24*7 on the busy Mumbai streets. Kaali Peeli is generally stopped by shouting “ Taxi Taxi” The history is that when the government decided to do away with the horse carriages which were slow and were ought to make city dirty, the concept of Taxi to substitute them was conceived. The house carriage owners known as ‘chiliyas’ were compensated by offering two permits for each Horse carriage. Hence it is believed that chiliyas were first taxi drivers in the city. They were addressed as ‘Driver Sahab’. The taxi drivers were in white or khaki uniform. They magically traversed the city without any GPS navigation.

                                         

In October 1909, the first taxi service of India was started in Mumbai similar to London Taxi. In its initial years, the fleet included big cars like Grandmaster ,Ambassador,Ply Mouth , Ford and small cars like Austin ,Hilman etc.The taxi meters were installed on basis of Germany  platform .It was mandatory to get Taxi Meter approved every year from VJTI (Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute) now known as (Veer Mata Jijiabai Technological Institute).

                                                   

Somewhere around 1957, the formal avatar of Mumbai Taxi was ‘imported Fiat car’ in Black colour with Yellow bands.’

In 1967-1968, the Premiere Auto Limited manufactured a Taxi model named after the queen ‘Padmini’. The company sold this model at most subsidized rate and manufactured these vehicles as a Corporate Social Responsibility. This led to Padmini becoming the only preferred car for taxi cabs until the company stopped its production in the year 1998 and government banned plying the cars more than 20 years old on the roads.

 

The growing popularity of the Bombay Taxi could not resist Bollywood from producing films on it. In once such film named ‘Khud-Daar’ Mr. Amitabh Bachchan was the lead actor. The list continues featuring various Superstars in films like ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Jaaneman’, ‘Sadu aur Shaitan’ and ‘Taxi No. 9-2-11’.

 

Kaali Peeli is termed as City’s Pheonix as its business has confronted many challenging situations till now and everytime it has come out with zeal and energy. With the rising prices of petrol and diesel, it became difficult to provide service at nominal rates. So LPG and CNG kits were installed to run the taxi and offer the services at same nominal rate. With shutting down of Premiere Auto Limited, alternative models like Santro, Ritz, i10, Omni were introduced as Taxi Cabs in the fleet. No sooner did they settle with alternate vehicles than the ‘Meru Cab’-fleet taxies was introduced. The  biggest challenge was faced with aggregators like Uber and Ola app based taxies.

 

The challenge was overcome by collaborating the kaali-peeli taxi with the app based taxies. The Taxi union has always respected the advent of competitors and introduction of new technologies posing challenges to their business. They believed in the policy of ‘To live and let live’.

 

Will there be the end of Mumbai Taxi from the roads in the near future?

Though app based taxi is better in service and car conditions, but concerns are raised on its fare pricing policies. The fees are almost 3x during peak hours. The Bombay Taxi Union will implement programs to bridge the gap in service. It is expected that government will implement a policy and bring uniformity and fairness in the prices and ensure price stability.

 

The Century Old ‘Mumbai Kaali Peeli Taxi' will and always remain on Mumbai roads.