By: Meghna Bal, Director, Esya Centre.
The Maharashtra cybercrime cell's recommendation to Apple and Google to remove Uber, Ola and Rapido from their app stores over alleged violations relating to bike taxis reveals a recurring feature of Indian governance: the tendency to approach digital regulation through maximalist enforcement rather than calibrated institutional responses. Legitimate regulatory concerns surrounding bike taxi operations in Maharashtra notwithstanding, demanding the removal of entire applications from app stores effectively operates as a ban. Maharashtra law enforcement must reconsider its actions, given their wider ramifications.
First, ride-hailing services have become central to urban life in India. They are expected to serve nearly 38 crore users by 2029. One report estimates that they save commuters more than 40 million hours annually through reduced travel and waiting times. The same report found that 84% of Indians surveyed believed that app-based ride-hailing had improved the quality of transportation in the country.
Second, commuter dependence on these services is heavily linked to speed, safety, and reliability. One study finds that riders frequently rely on these platforms for airport travel, hospital visits, emergencies, and late-night commuting. For women commuters in particular, ride-hailing services increasingly operate as substitutes for unreliable or unsafe public transport systems. An Oxford Economics study conducted across five Indian metropolitan cities found that four in ten working women riders believed ride-hailing enabled them to join the workforce by overcoming mobility barriers, while half stated that these services were crucial in balancing work and family responsibilities.
Third, they serve as a key source of livelihood for millions of people. These applications primarily operate as systems for market coordination, reducing search and transaction costs between drivers and riders at scale. This means that for many gig workers, these platforms are not supplementary conveniences but the infrastructure through which economic participation becomes possible. According to a report brought out by the ONDC Network, Uber and Ola alone work with 3.5 million drivers.
This becomes especially important in the Indian labour market, where informal work, fragmented demand, and underemployment continue to define economic reality for large segments of the population. Ride-hailing platforms aggregate demand, create discoverability, and enable flexible participation in urban economies in ways that traditional transport systems often cannot.
The ONDC Network report also indicates that new business models in ride-hailing, such as subscription-as-a-service, where drivers pay the platform a subscription fee in lieu of a commission, and decide and retain the entire fare for the ride, are improving the fortunes of drivers drastically. The same report indicates that the subscription modelallows drivers to earn up to INR 1,36,500 more annually. This requires further exploration and study, as it reinforces the position that platforms increasingly serve as critical economic infrastructure for large segments of India's gig workforce.
Fourth, an effective ban on these applications, which is what their removal from app stores would be tantamount to, would not hold up to constitutional scrutiny. Any restriction placed on the fundamental right to do business guaranteed by Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution has to pass the test of proportionality. Among other things, the test of proportionality requires that there must not be any other less restrictive, yet equally effective, alternative measure available. If the dispute concerns the legality of bike taxi operations within Maharashtra, several narrower regulatory alternatives remain available to the State. Authorities could suspend or restrict specific services within territorial limits, impose penalties, initiate adjudicatory proceedings, or require compliance-related modifications.
Ride-hailing platforms are no longer an urban luxury; they are a vital means of transit in the country. Obviating them from app stores will only serve to harm the country's wider interests as they generate employment, play a key role in women joining the workforce, an essential complement to existing public transit infrastructure, and an effective substitute when such infrastructure is absent. The Maharashtra cybercrime cell must reconsider its request to app store providers and move towards a more proportionate way of dealing with these service providers.
