In August 2010, as Delhi was getting a makeover in preparation for the 19th Commonwealth Games, Sheila Dikshit bedecked the city’s thoroughfares in the red and green colours of the then fashionable e-rickshaw, which she described as a “needed effort” towards making Delhi a “pollution-free zone”. Four years later Dikshit’s successor as chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, vowed to clean up Delhi’s air, by, in no small part, expanding its e-rickshaw fleet. The city is now estimated to be serviced by lakhs of e-rickshaws – the Delhi Economic Survey 2021-22 gives two numbers, 10,33,000 and 99,552 – up from just 25 in 2010. And Kejriwal continues to market the e-rickshaw as a key antidote to Delhi’s polluted air, of which vehicular traffic is the second largest source. His administration is pushing to expand the e-rickshaw network by subsidising its purchase and introducing it to the Electric Vehicle Policy as one of the nine key steps to tackle pollution.
