With no augmentation to its existing fleet of buses, the cash-strapped Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has a challenging task to improve connectivity in rural areas. Among the districts that it provides services to, Chitradurga has 578 villages that are deprived of its buses, the highest across Karnataka, where KSRTC has a monopoly. Tumakuru has the second largest number of unconnected villages at 510, followed by Chikkamagaluru district with 408 villages.
The numbers are telling, given that KSRTC now has a monopoly over 17 districts to provide bus services. Currently, 3,002 villages cannot avail of its services. To bridge this gap and improve connectivity, officials estimate that the corporation needs over 1,000 buses as well as additional 3,500 bus crew. In terms of infrastructure, it will have to invest in building five to six new depots.
The corporation, which is in a deep financial crisis, is looking for aid from the State Government to induct new buses, but the outlook appears bleak. It received none in 2021-22. In the recent Budget presented for 2022-23, no specific financial allocation was announced to induct new buses.
A KSRTC official said that in 2019, the State Government had issued a notification for the ‘New Comprehensive Area Scheme for the Entire State of Karnataka’ , a policy decision that favours the State-run road transport corporation giving it a complete monopoly to provide bus services. However, private operators who had valid permits to run buses prior to the notification are still allowed to operate.
Private operators only focus on routes that are profitable, which KSRTC does not have the luxury to do, said the official. “As a public service, KSRTC has to provide buses on all routes, profitable or otherwise. Now, the corporation has a responsibility to provide over 3,000 villages that are not connected. There is a possibility of private operators providing services to some of these villages as per the permits granted prior to the notification. However, we do not have data on that,” said the official.
New buses
In many areas, roads have to be developed first. “In some of the villages, the road network has to be improved. For instance, some are too narrow. If there is a need to operate mini buses and others, that needs to be taken into consideration too.
Though the KSRTC wants to reach hundreds of more villages, the existing fleet size is not sufficient. The corporation has a fleet size of 8,000. In the last five years, the KSRTC added the highest number of new buses in 2017-18 that is 1,514. But since then numbers have been declining. The following year, it received 391 buses. The pandemic further derailed its expansion plans with only 147 buses added in 2020-21 and none in this financial year.
KSRTC officials hope that after the M.R. Sreenivasa Murthy Committee – which is examining the restructuring of RTCs to make them financially self-sustainable – submits its report to the Government, they will get more funds on induction to induct new buses. Transport experts and activists are of the opinion that RTCs cannot be run as profit-making enterprises. That in in itself is flawed, they said.
