New Delhi: Drivers of app-based taxi services Ola and Uber are marching to the Vidhan Sabha in Mumbai on Monday, the first day of the state legislative session. Over 10,000 drivers were expected to participate in the march that started at 10 am from Bharat Mata junction in Parel.The drivers plan to meet chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and request him to intervene on their behalf with the taxi companies. In the build-up to this march, nearly 70% of the cabs in Mumbai remained offline on Sunday, pushing surge pricing to almost double the regular fare.Low fares and no incentivesDrivers allege that they have been hit hard after the cab companies stopped paying incentives but kept fares largely unchanged. Their demands include better wages through an increase in the base fare to Rs 100-150 and a per km rate in the range of Rs 18 to 23.Last month, they had gone on a 12-day strike that started on October 22 to press these demands and called it off only after assurances from state transport minister Diwakar Raote. Sachin Ahir from the Maharashtra Rashtriya Kamgar Sangh (MRKS), that is leading the strikes, says they are forced to go on strike again as the cab aggregators had not called representatives of the drivers or any other government officials for talks till Saturday. They will take a final call on the strikes on Monday evening.Response from Ola and UberIn a response to Hindustan Times, an Ola spokesperson said, “Our policies are designed to help driver partners function like entrepreneurs with absolute control over their income. Earnings of driver partners on the Ola platform are best in the industry.”While the drivers say that they are not earning enough to even pay off car loans and are finding it difficult to run their households, Uber says it’s doing its best to resolve the situation. “One of their demands was to link fares to rising fuel prices .. we have introduced a national fuel price index, which will ensure that driver earnings are correlated with fuel price hikes,” an Uber official told Times of India.End of a dream rideNot just in Mumbai, multiple reports from across cities where these cabs operate have indicated that these concerns are common. According to various experts The Wire has spoken to, Uber and Ola were initially able to woo drivers with attractive incentive schemes and the assurance of regular work. A couple of years later though, the drivers say they feel shortchanged.They were able to earn much more after switching to the cab aggregators. Better earnings through incentives on achieving targets (a fixed number of trips per day) and higher pay for operating in peak traffic hours encouraged many drivers to invest in more cars and a better lifestyle for themselves. Now that those perks have been withdrawn, they are struggling to make ends meet.Many trade union leaders and economists blame the ‘gig economy’ model for these workers’ plights as such ‘on-demand’ jobs through aggregators do not recognise them as employees. The cab drivers are called ‘driver partners’ and are not entitled to social security, benefits or collective bargaining.