Would we ban autos or cycle-rickshaws if a rape occurred in one?

So we banned Uber. And all other app-based taxi companies as well.
After all, one of the drivers registered with the mobile app company raped a girl in Delhi during a ride. The reason cited for the ban was that Uber did not register and follow the procedures as a radio taxi company should, and did not independently do enough verification checks on their drivers. Of course, the government never explained why the company was allowed to function for months before the rape incident. It also didn’t mention that Uber only allowed government-approved, commercially licensed drivers to connect with users. The government didn’t go into the fact that some of the same government-approved, commercially licensed drivers could be rogues, who could produce fake character certificates that have no digital archives or database. No, we didn’t go into the real issues of there being a systemic failure of driver approval or police records of an individual not being readily available. We simply banned Uber and similar apps that connect licensed drivers with needy customers in Delhi. This, somehow, is supposed to make women safer. Thousands of drivers lost their jobs overnight. Women in Delhi (along with many men), who used such apps to go from one place to the other, will no longer have the option to do so. What exactly are these commuters supposed to do instead? Well, there is no answer. Perhaps they can try their luck in hunting for an auto. If they do find one, the driver will either not agree to go to your destination or not follow the meter, thereby breaking a law the moment you get in. How exactly that will be a safer ride is not something the government wants to get into. Ban Uber and the like. End of story. Move on.
Why do we do this? Why do we as a society refuse to act in a reasonable, rational manner and choose emotional reactions and try to find an easy scapegoat? After all, would we dare to ban autos, or cycle-rickshaws, if a similar incident occurred in one? We attack the likes of Uber to dump guilt. We don’t like Uber because it’s new and foreign, something that scares us and appeals to our anti-innovation, anti-foreigner and regressive ‘I told you so’ mentality when anything new goes wrong.
However, more important is what we actually need to do, which is to reform our police and RTO systems. The two main changes needed there are digitization and easy retrieval of records as well as a smoothly functioning, noncorrupt and harassment-free police force. Of course, these are big asks. But until we fix this, such incidents will continue to happen. Police verifications in India, although recommended and available, are either associated with harassment or bribes. Ditto for any work related to the RTO. The processes are made so onerous that most people avoid it. This is why most people do not police-verify their domestic helps or drivers. The irony of course is a bribe can get you the verification in any case, making a mockery of the entire process. It is this loophole the perpetrator used to get his documents, which in turn earned him a job. He could have become a driver at another taxi stand or radio taxi company and done the same crime. Hence, it ain’t Uber we need to ban, but fix our own systems.
So is Uber not to blame here at all? Well, no. There is one mistake they did and there is a lot to learn from it. And that is they relied on the government approval system to enrol a driver. A character certificate from the police and a commercial driving license as the backing documents to hire a driver may be okay in other countries. However, in India, such things are easily arranged with a modest bribe or jugaad. If Uber is serious about being world-class, relying on our jugaad approval systems is unfortunately, a big mistake. Other small private tourist taxi owners, with a fleet of a dozen cabs, keep an eye on their drivers — who is drunk, who looks a bit odd, what’s the word about him etc. Uber, by its nature as a global app that connects drivers and users, cannot do that. But that doesn’t mean Uber is not for India. We cannot let an industry stay in the unorganized sector due to bad systems, else we will never be able to scale up. We need apps like Uber quite badly to fill the gap in our transport infrastructure.
Let us not do jugaad short-cuts in our attempts to address women’s safety. Let’s drive this the long way, by overhauling our systems of policing and regulating to make them reliable and trustworthy. That’s the big specific lesson from the recent incident. Overall, for heaven’s sake, let us respect our women. And you don’t need the government’s approval or an app for that.