London, long a favoured destination for oligarchs, hedge-fund managers and those in need of discreet financial hospitality, may now wish to advertise itself to a new class of migrant entrepreneur: the Delhi cycle-rickshaw wallah.The British capital has finally decided to regulate its pedicabs; those neon-lit, music-blaring contraptions that hover around the West End like over-enthusiastic dragonflies. From October, according to Transport for London, drivers will require licences, background checks, medical certificates, English proficiency and registered vehicles. Base fares will be capped at £5 — roughly Rs 615 at current exchange rates — with a maximum of £1 per minute (about Rs 123) and £3 per additional passenger (around Rs 369).This follows complaints of what might politely be termed exuberant pricing. One reported case involved an attempt to charge £580 for a journey of less than twenty minutes from Oxford Circus to Old Street.Let us pause.At current exchange rates — roughly £1 to Rs 123 — that comes to more than Rs 71,000 for a short spin through central London. In Indian terms, that is not a fare. That is a wedding budget.One is tempted to imagine the reaction in a Delhi by-lane.Somewhere in Paharganj, a rickshaw puller pauses mid-pedal. He wipes his brow, squints and asks for clarification.“Seventy-one thousand? For twenty minutes?”In Chandni Chowk, negotiations routinely stall over Rs 20. A passenger will protest that Rs 40 is daylight robbery; the rickshaw wallah will counter that traffic is terrible and the sun unforgiving. They will settle at Rs 35. Both will feel faintly victorious.In London, by contrast, the negotiation appears to have leapt directly to Renaissance patronage.To be fair, London pedicabs are not quite the same species as their Delhi cousins. They are upholstered, illuminated and frequently accompanied by a soundtrack at a decibel level normally associated with nightclub closing time. They are less transport than mobile karaoke lounge.But still.The humble rickshaw has travelled a long historical arc. Once a symbol of colonial urban life in Calcutta and Simla, then an emblem of post-colonial hustle in Old Delhi and Lucknow, it has now re-emerged in the imperial capital, reborn as a luxury experience with optional LED lighting.London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has expressed the hope that pedicabs should be “a fun way to explore London” rather than an encounter with “rip-off fares, blaring music and unsafe behaviour.” One sympathises. No great city wishes its visitors to depart believing they have financed a minor infrastructure project in a single evening.Yet there is something faintly poetic about the moment. Britain once exported governance to the subcontinent. It now finds itself importing the rickshaw and struggling to regulate it.In Delhi, regulation is minimal, but instinctive. The system runs on eye contact and mutual calculation. There is no displayed tariff card. There is instead the ancient subcontinental art of bargaining, refined over centuries. It is theatre as much as commerce.“Kahan chaloge, babu?” asks the rickshaw wallah in the old Hindi film refrain — where would you like to go, sir?The question carries layers: distance, weather, traffic, the passenger’s shoes, the look in his eye. A price is floated. The counter-offer comes instantly. It is not adversarial; it is ritual.In London’s West End, the ritual appears to have mutated. The passenger, perhaps slightly dazzled by theatre lights and Leicester Square optimism, boards the vehicle. The music begins. The city glides past in neon blur. The fare, it seems, may later arrive as revelation.Thus, the need for official intervention. Transport for London has long lobbied for the power to regulate pedicabs, which until now occupied a curious legal twilight, neither taxi nor private hire vehicle. The new regime will impose background checks, medical standards and licensing requirements. The pedicab, once a symbol of informal enterprise, is about to acquire paperwork.One wonders what a Delhi wallah would make of the application form.“English language requirement?”He might reasonably point out that in Old Delhi, language requirements are handled with efficiency: the passenger speaks; the driver nods; both understand.“Medical certificate?”In Delhi, survival in traffic constitutes a medical certificate.“Enhanced criminal background check?”In Chandni Chowk, reputations are checked daily by gossip.And then there is the fare cap: £5, or Rs 615 before the wheels even begin to turn. At last, predictability.It is here that the global irony sharpens. The Delhi rickshaw wallah is often portrayed in Western imagination as precarious, marginal, emblematic of subsistence economics. Yet the London pedicab operator, until regulation descends, appears capable of quoting sums that would cause even Connaught Place to blush.The exchange rate has turned the world upside down.There is no need to romanticise poverty in order to note the absurdity. A Rs 50 argument in Delhi may consume more emotional energy than a £580 glide through Soho. But the scale difference is comic in its extremity.Perhaps London’s new rules will bring moderation. Perhaps the pedicab will become, as the mayor hopes, a cheerful adjunct to theatre-going rather than an act of financial brinkmanship. Perhaps the music will soften.But somewhere, one suspects, a Delhi rickshaw wallah would observe the situation with professional admiration.Rs 71,0000 for twenty minutes.“Kahan chaloge, babu?” he might ask, thoughtfully.And then, after a moment:“For that money, I will take you to Agra. And wait as well.”