GPS and Indian Politics

CC Image courtesy of Stephan Rebernik via Flickr

In December 2012, a 23-year-old woman and her male companion boarded a private bus near South Delhi after a night out. The couple was immediately assaulted, and the woman was repeatedly raped by the male passengers as well as the driver of the bus. The woman later died from the injuries she sustained in the attack. The incident caused immediate public and violent outcry against a government that fails to protect its citizens, especially its female citizens. Laws were passed and changes implemented to protect passengers on public transportation, including a plan to install GPS-enabled navigation and surveillance equipment in all buses, cluster buses, and autorickshaws.

A Flawed Plan

In order to provide protection and security for its women, many of whom have no other means of getting around than public transportation or private buses, the Indian government decided to outfit all modes of transportation with GPS equipment in 32 cities throughout the country. But citizens may not be getting the high level of protection they expect because the large companies that manufacture GPS devices won’t do business with the government.

• Mapmy India has an annual revenue of more than $16.5 million and a growth rate of 800% over the last 5 years. They provide not only navigation devices but also surveillance equipment, but their head of marketing, Deepro Ganguly, says that working with the government “is very opaque. There is way too much confusion.”

• Arya Omnitalk Wireless Solutions is another large company in India that provides global positioning system services to Delhi police vans as well as radio taxis and corporate fleets. They have approximately 400 employees, but the company’s chief operating officer and chief technology officer, Saumil Dhru, reports that “in government tenders, there are so many unorganized players. There is no point in putting time and energy in these.”

Companies like these argue that the government has low entry barriers that allow smaller, less organized, and often low budget companies win bids for government contracts. They also complain that the government expects high-quality equipment and technology at unrealistically low prices, again letting less respectable companies bid and undercutting the very security the government hopes to attain.

A Case in Point

The government has many contracts ready to be handed out, but they lack not only regulations that would ensure a reliable GPS system but also an up-to-date and centralized monitoring system. It does no good to have a monitoring device on a bus if the data is not monitored by law enforcement who can immediately step into a situation. In Delhi, for example, the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS) sees that the city’s cluster buses are automatically fitted with GPS units, but they awarded the contract to a less than ideal company.

Sobha Applied DSP was once an arm of the Sobha Developers, a real estate company, not a GPS manufacturing company. The company denies continued connection with its parent firm, but it did keep its name. They import their GPS equipment from Germany, undercutting India-based companies like MapmyIndia and Arya Omnitalk. They also supply GPS units for autorickshaws without the manufacturer’s license required for the fair meter. They maintain a tie-up with Pulsar Technologies, which the DIMTS lists on their website as an independent Bangalore company, though the fact is that the two companies share the same phone number. The DIMTs backs their decision, however, claiming that all devices were checked before installation. They also claim that they oversee the data collection and penalize drivers for speeding and reckless driving; however, the data is not yet connected to any police control room or law enforcement agency.

A Big Market

With so much at stake, the government cannot afford to lower its standards by alienating the bigger, organized companies that offer real solutions for real problems in favor of low-budget operations that are inferior. The statistics seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t pay to cut corners.

• The anticipated Indian market for GPS devices that fit in a car is 100,000 units.


• There are 5,000 buses in the city of Delhi alone; almost 4,000 are Delhi Transport Corporation buses with more than 1,000 cluster buses. Only 982 of these are equipped with GPS technology.


• Only new automobiles come equipped with GPS, leaving 55,000 old cars lacking basic navigation equipment.


• The estimated cost of outfitting all the remaining buses and automobiles with GPS devices is in excess of $65 million (385 crore).

Large companies like MapmyIndia and Arya Omnitalk know what it takes to have a sound, reliable, and potentially life-saving system in place, complete with high-quality GPS units and a centralized monitoring base. But if they are not willing to even bid because of the politics and bureaucracy of India’s government, there is not much hope that India’s people, especially its women, will find security in its public transportation.

GPS and Indian Politics