The BEST Bet For Mumbai’s Commuters
· Free Press Journal
With the strike jointly called by 12 unions of workers of the BEST, Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport, bus network in Mumbai, entering its third day on Sunday, the stage is set for more chaos and disruption than when it began. The Maharashtra Essential Services Maintenance Act has been invoked but may have little impact. Private bus operators in commercial business districts like Bandra-Kurla Complex and Powai, app-based cabs, autorickshaws, and black-and-yellow taxis have proved insufficient to handle the load. A staggering 2.5 million commuters use the BEST buses every day across its fleet of 2600-2700 buses.
The BEST service remains Mumbai’s most widely connecting public service network after the suburban trains. It is also the safest, most affordable one and provides the best last-mile connectivity in the city. It was considered a model till recently. As the new transport modes, such as the metro network, got constructed and expanded, the BEST services saw a decline instead of being re-imagined and strengthened. For well over a decade, the bus network managed autonomously but, with the oversight of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), was deliberately put on the path of shrinkage and disintegration. The official excuse is that changes in law meant that its losses could not be offset by the BEST Undertaking’s profits from electricity distribution.
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This, while true, is a fig leaf of an excuse. Public transport runs despite losses in all major cities of the world. The BEST losses were allowed to pile up—Rs 9500 crore in about ten years. The two-fold remedy was to hire buses and staff on a wet-lease basis from private contractors and to monetise the 27 bus depots, each of which is large acreage and situated at prime locations across Mumbai. Three have been handed over to private developers; a few more are in the pipeline. The wet-lease arrangement has, ironically, led to higher losses besides untrained staff, a rise in accidents, and so on. From a fleet of 4,700, ferrying nearly 4.6 million commuters a day in 2012-13, the BEST is today half its size, with barely 240 buses of its own.
However, the BMC, despite gargantuan annual budgets—the 2026-27 budget is nearly Rs 81,000 crore—has been consistently reluctant to allocate the funds that the BEST needs and deserves. The value and need of a well-functioning public transport service used by millions every day cannot, and should not, be measured merely in profit-loss statements. The unions have sought to bring focus to these issues—a nine-day strike in 2019 raised the same issues—besides their pending payments. The ball is clearly in the management’s court. The BMC, which spends lavishly, about Rs 35,000 crore of a projected Rs 100,000 crore on the coastal road, can surely fund the BEST network on which millions depend.