Why the number of bus users in Mumbai and Delhi has plummeted

Nilakshi Joshi’s day starts early. Every morning, she and her six-year-old son walk from their home in Shivaji Nagar, a massive cluster of slums in the east of Mumbai, to the nearest bus stop to board a red bus at 7 am.

The bus is operated by Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport, the city’s public bus company. Joshi and her son travel 5 km to his school, after which she returns home. A few hours later, at 11 am, she repeats this journey to pick him up.

Like Joshi, Delhi resident Ramvati also relies entirely on the bus system for her daily commutes. Every morning, she travels around 2 km in a low-floor bus run by the Delhi Transport Corporation, from the densely built colony of Tughlaqabad Extension in south-east Delhi to high-rise apartment buildings where she is a domestic worker.

She takes a bus back home at around 1.30 pm to pick her son up and drop him off at tuition classes after school. She waits an hour there, then heads back home with him.

Both Ramvati and Joshi’s waits at their bus stops should not exceed 20 minutes, according to the timetables of the transport corporations of these cities. But when Scroll met them in late July,...

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