Can a cooperative model fix public mobility?

Can Bharat Taxi— a cooperative mobility platform hailed as the ‘Amul model for taxis’ — offer Indian cities a fairer, more reliable mobility alternative?

- Manoj Sharma

The number of public buses per person in India remains among the lowest globally, and even Mumbai and Delhi fall short of recommended fleets.

(RAJK RAJ/HT PHOTO)

Every morning in India’s megacities, commuters can be seen jostling for space on overcrowded buses or haggling with auto drivers who quote fares ona whim. For most office-goers, options are limited — stand in endless queues for a bus or open a ride-hailing app and brace for surge pricing and cancellations, or both.

This daily grind captures India’s continuing urban transport crisis. Despite years of policies and plans, public transport in most cities remains inadequate and overburdened. Buses — the backbone of urban mobility — are in short supply. Metros have grown fast in some cities, but they only cover certain corridors and can’t handle last-mile trips or spread-out journeys.

Into this chaos comes what many see asan unlikely challenger — Bharat Taxi —a cooperative mobility platform being billed as the “Amul model for taxis” where drivers are shareholders rather than gig workers governed by algorithms.

Run by the Delhi-based Sahakar Taxi Cooperative Limited, with Amul’s Managing Director Jayen Mehta as chairman, the initiative is backed by the Ministry of Cooperation and major institutions such as IFFCO, NAFED and GCMMF (Amul). Likely to be formally launched in January, the cooperative has an authorised share capital of ₹300 crore, with eight primary promoters committing an initial ₹80 crore — ₹10 crore each.

“The idea is to benefit the two most important stakeholders. Customers get stable pricing, while drivers retain their full earnings without paying commissions. We have also ensured social security benefits such as insurance for drivers. More than 1.1 lakh drivers have already registered in Delhi-NCR and around 3,000 in Rajkot ahead of the January 1 launch,” said Ashok Thakur, chairman of NAFED and one of the promoters.