Uber's woes continue; miles to go on tech road for government, police

NEW DELHI: Even as taxi-hailing app Uber's woes continue in Delhi after one of its drivers raped a woman on December 7, the question that keeps cropping up time and again is how effectively the government and police departments in the national capital region leverage the technology to ensure safety of citizens, especially women.

While smartphones, which have led to the phenomenal growth of taxi aggregators such as Uber and Ola in metro cities, have become ubiquitous, governments are struggling to keep pace with rapidly changing technology and providing basic safety apps that can help reach a victim faster in case of a distress situation. The Delhi police, which has a couple of apps for quick filing of FIRs and tracking traffic, is still in talks with app makers to provide a mobile app that can help a person in an emergency situation.

There is however, no on ground implementation. "Technology is one part, but when it comes to actual implementation, things in the government take time to move," a senior police official told ET.

The Delhi government's dedicated "Women in Distress" helpline (181) for women was said to launch a mobile app last month, which would help them track a victim's location through their phone. However, there is no sign of the app as of now, and no clarity about when it could be launched.

The Gurgaon police have a mobile app which lets a user call police assistance (100), women, childline, and senior citizen's helplines and other important emergency numbers, but has no mechanism to track a person in a distress situation.

"We currently do not have a feature in this app that sends a direct distress signal to the police system," Gurgaon Police Commissioner Navdeep Singh Virk told ET. He added that building such a feature has "some technical challenges which are being dealt with by the GPS GIS Module in the CCTNS project, which is likely to be launched soon".