Here is my experience, I have been using cab services almost everyday for the past 12 years (company and personal) in the NCR region:
1. Most of the times all the driver has: skill of driving and a valid state permit for commercial vehicles.
2. Not much background check is done.
3. Most of the drivers are the scum of society and are quite boorish and misbehave with clients.
4. The vendor companies do have a commitment with the transport admin. for verification and character check of the drivers. This step is usually opaque (highly) and is easily circumvented. Many a times the vendor provides a kick-back to the admin. staff, and this step in nod-winked to approval status.
5. The vendor company is many a times run by owl-hoot personnel who happened to get a lot of cash (usually selling rural real estate which has migrated to urban), who is uneducated, brash, and has no normalcy for societal functions or civil behavioral mechanisms.
6. If a driver misbehaves with entity A (company / MNC / transport service), he is reprimanded verbally and seamlessly migrated to entity B -so- is still within the system.
7. The drivers are over worked and 18H shifts are normal.
8. They are grossly underpaid.
9. They are untrustworthy and lie a lot. (Both vendors and drivers).
10. There is no system in place which binds all traffic / road offenses to a DL. Even if there is: bribery negates this, and all come out clean.
Basically transport services of this type run on one word: Guarantee. Customer ----> Driver ----> Vendor ----> Owner. The latter three in this chain, care nothing for trust, the safety of the passengers, or any CC requiem. We Indians as a populace center have not even an iota of essence which speaks for: trust, value of life and/or the plight of woman-hood. It is rotten, sad, and sickening all combined at the same time.
Let the M & P (media and politicians) play the fiddle akin Nero, while we dance a jig for protest and frustration.