My daily commute to office is by office cab, If not to office I am used to go by autos as I am always confused with buses,bus numbers and routes. But travelling from one end to other end of banglore in an auto eats half of our day's income. So last weekend, I thought I would better go by buses to save money and to be also safe. For time being I'll keep my saving account from buses aside and tell you about dirty saving accounts of bangalore bus conductors. Every one of us must have heard about the illegal earnings of Bill Collector, I think in nearby future our bus conductors would occupy the seats of bill collectors. Its not about their illegal way of earnings but the huge losses to government.
I boarded at Nandidurga road and asked for a ticket to shivajinagar. As I was not aware of bus fares and also nandidurga road is very close by to sivajinagar, I thought minimum fare would be Rs 3 and gave hime 3 rs. He pocketed the coins and kept himself busy in pocketing the coins from other passengers,I was innocently looking at him expecting a ticket. To my surprise he did not issue tickets to none of the passengers sitting infront of me and the most astonishing thing was not even a single female is asking for ticket. I immediately realised that conductor is escaping to Gents section of the bus and asked for a ticket. He gave a bad look and told in kannada "Ticket is of Rs 5, If you want to have ticket pay 2 rs extra". I paid him actual amount 5rs and collected the ticket.
In a conversation with one of my friends I have got a chance to discuss about this fresh way of corruption. I was really shocked when she told me that her actual daily bus fare from her home to office was rs 10 and she had been travelling with just rs 5 with out a ticket. We think ourselves to be intelligent in saving 5 rs for 10 but we are not aware of the bad consequences. Almost everyone is getting trapped thinking they are getting benefited. Who is going to compensate the losses? we are unable to foresee the long term tampering of system thinking of short term little profits. Ultimately we the people are getting taxed heavily. My friend thinks of saving 5rs in bus and pays 15rs extra to buy 1 kg of rice (1 kg of rice was rs 15 one-two years back and rs 37 now).Not only her,everybody getting encouraged by another is committing the same mistake, Good conductor seeing another bad conductor starts earning bad money.
Other friend of mine is a bit kind hearted and says its just matter of 2 or max 10 rs they would get per person, how else we could help the conductors, he argues that it is of no use of taking tickets when all this ransom is anyway going to the banks of tax havens and questions me how would it help people ultimately?? he may be right, but let us hope that atleast little of that money goes in help of needy. When conductor has such cunning brains to earn the money illegally do we have to really help him?
If we really want to help the poor let us ask for the ticket the minimum thing which we can do, atleast we'll be able to help them in letting them live with what they have now, why should we be responsible for poor to get more impoverished?
