With mobile Internet services restored in Assam, app-based taxi services resumed operations, bringing relief to commuters.

President of the All Assam Cab Operators’ Union Ismail Ali said, “We have over 10,000 taxis. On an average, 5,000 to 6,000 cabs operate daily. With no Internet for nine straight days, it became tough for our drivers to earn a living.”

“A driver on an average earns Rs 1,000 a day. With almost 5,000 cabs going out of business, a loss of almost Rs 50 lakh took place on a single day. Some cabs had managed to get offline customers but it was tough for these cabs to get passengers this way within the city,” he added.

“We thank Gauhati High Court for ordering lifting of the ban on mobile Internet. We had a very hard time in the past week. We appeal to the government not to take such a step in future,” Ali said.

He also blamed the Centre for “ignoring the interests” of those employed in Internet-based services.

On December 17, nearly 1,000 drivers, employed under app-based aggregators like Ola and Uber, carried out a protest against the mobile Internet ban.

Bidyut Deka, an Uber driver, said, “This is our only source of income. Ban on mobile Internet affects our livelihood.”

Anupam Lasker, a cab owner, said his drivers have not been able to pay him anything for the past nine days and it will be very difficult for him to pay the EMIs for the month as well as the drivers’ salaries.

Laskar added that his family had bought three cars on EMIs and he drives one of them, while two of his drivers run the other two cars. “I am still clueless on how to make up for the loss,” he said. The ban on mobile Internet did not just affect the cab services; the app-based food delivery services were hit too.

Sanjiv Bora, a food delivery executive, who earns Rs 300 to 400 per day by delivering food through online apps, said he suffered immensely during the ban. “My family nearly ran out of rations in the past five days,” he said.

The cab unions urged the state government to compensate their loses that they incurred during the ban.

Pinku Datta, driver of an online bike taxi aggregator, said: “If the government is concerned about ‘unwanted things’ being posted on social media, they should have banned the social media sites, not stop the Internet entirely.”

“The government should ban whatever they want, barring our only source of income,” he added.