Taxi services across the world can’t be ranked at all

Most other nations do not have a plethora of choices when it comes to urban public transport besides buses and trains. We in India certainly have many more options, from rickshaws and phatphatias to autorickshaws and minivans of all shapes and sizes.

Rating our cabs alongside taxi services across the world, as a survey has, thus is like comparing apples and oranges.

In any case, expectations vary from country to country, even city to city, and the exigencies of getting round in Mumbai cannot be juxtaposed against the orderly traffic — jammed or otherwise — of London, New York or Tokyo, the three city cab services ranked best in the survey.

Also, as there are different types of cabs in India, from the usual black-yellow ones to dial-a-cab options, it is unclear which one the surveyed Indians alluded to when they optimistically hoped newspapers and music would be provided. Clearly, they could not mean the frenetic and wind-swept cabs that are the heart and soul of our congested cities.

For sheer chutzpah, of course, Indian cabbies and their trusty though generally ramshackle steeds could surely hold their own with any in the developed world. But it is a testament to the derring-do, if not the desperation of the citizenry of our urban centres, that 30% of them have admitted to kissing in the backseat of these careening vehicles.