Banning is easy. Now the question is, how can Uber be regulated?

Karnataka is the latest state in India to ban Uber, although the app continues to offer rides in Bangalore (Karnataka’s capital) when this article went live. This follows the bans on Uber in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chandigarh, after the rape of a young woman in Delhi by an Uber driver with a criminal record.

Interestingly, in Bangalore, Uber’s main Indian rival Ola, a homegrown startup, is excluded from the ban because it is registered with the Karnataka transport department.

So far, only the state of Tamil Nadu – ruled by a woman chief minister – has taken a contrarian stand, saying that it does not propose to ban Uber which operates in its capital city of Chennai. It has asked all taxi operators to verify their driver data and put it up on a website, making it available to all.

Uber vows to puts its house in order

The ban on Uber in Bangalore comes right after it promised to put its own house in order. In a blog post, Uber said:

First, let us acknowledge that we must do better; and we are conducting a full audit of our verification, rider feedback and support processes. We are implementing measures to ensure that critical rider feedback is escalated immediately and immediate action is taken in every instance. We are also re-reviewing rider feedback on every driver partner across India to make sure nothing has been missed. Second, we are assessing all driver screening processes. We are evaluating additional screening options to include background checks on all our driver partners in India above and beyond what is currently required. Third, we will also bring in our global best practices where it would enhance our India safety efforts.

The so-called ‘global best practices’, however, are themselves under scrutiny around the world, from America to Australia. Uber’s home city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit just this week accusing it of misrepresentation.

Uber claims that its background checks conducted by a private third party are better than those of the state, but the San Francisco district attorney points out that Uber’s screening does not include fingerprint identification and other basic requirements of regular taxi services in California. Uber has even gone to court in Arizona and blocked a requirement to follow the basic safety procedures mandated for regular taxi services. So, it is not clear what Uber means when it says it will do background checks “above and beyond what is currently required.”

Down under in Australia, the state of Victoria has ordered Uber to cease operations in its territory because Uber refuses to follow safety regulations. Victoria’s Taxi Commissioner Graeme Samuel says Uber has been simply ignoring regulators: “I’d have to say, in their operations over the past 12 months they’ve not been gaming the regulators, they’ve just actually been thumbing their nose at them.”

Regulatory vacuum in India

In India, the safety checks on taxi drivers are full of holes, and a number of crimes have been committed in taxis, buses, and trains before the Uber case.

The hope was that Uber would not only make taxis more chic, convenient, and affordable, but also safer, given its proclaimed commitment to women’s safety and its own interest in safeguarding the reputation of a globally skyrocketing brand with billions of dollars in funding. But that hope has been belied by the rape in Delhi and series of revelations on how Uber has been skirting even the existing safety procedures, not just in India but even in better regulated regions like the US, Europe, and Australia.