Private bus operators have grown five times in the last 15 years.
Less than a week after 45 people were burnt alive in their sleep in a Bangalore to Hyderabad bus, little lessons have been learnt from the tragedy with operators openly flouting travel norms.
As people return to work after the Diwali weekend, NDTV finds out that travel companies hire inexperienced drivers who have no time to shave or eat well, forget getting a few hours of sleep between their long-distance journeys.
Also, with many drivers on leave, travel companies ply extra buses to meet the three-fold rise in demand by hiring drivers for a week or so without due diligence.
This NDTV reporter boarded one of the Chennai-bound buses from Bangalore. The air-conditioned Volvo bus was being driven by a senior citizen, who had short sightedness. It was his first long trip in the day but the 65-year-old said he is supposed to drive another bus back to Bangalore overnight.
"The first question that passengers ask as soon as they enter a bus is what time it will reach. That puts a lot of pressure on us. I haven't taken a day off, not even a few hours of rest. The company says do the extra work. They cannot understand our needs," said the driver.
"We know that it is riskier than traveling in train or car. But what to do? We do not get tickets. We surely need to bring in a mechanism which can control speed and check the status of the bus at different points on the highway. We see boards on the highway which says highway police patrolling. But is that a reality or just a fancy board?" ask Reshma, a techie in Bangalore who frequently travels to Hyderabad by bus.
The rules say that for any travel above 300 km, a travel company needs to have two drivers on the bus. After 200 km of driving, the second driver must take over. And a driver cannot be traveling more than 450 to 500 kilometers a day.
The engines of these carriers also need at least five hours to cool down after running up to 8 hours.
Still, the government rarely conducts checks on private operators that have grown five times in the last 15 years.
Among the many lapses in the accident in Andhra Pradesh's Mahbubnagar, the most glaring was that there was only one driver instead of the mandatory two for a journey of over 500 km.
Even though 10 out of the 12 buses that this reporter boarded did have the necessary safety equipment, many in their staff admit that buses miss their service dates due to the demand. Not running the Volvo for a one-way tour means a loss of over Rs 50,000, they say.