I once took an Ambassador taxi from a 5-star hotel in Delhi and asked the cabbie to use the meter -- he agreed with a way-too-big smile on his face and starting poking at the meter like a monkey on crack. The numbers started spinning up like the US national debt: we were past Rs. 50 before we got out the hotel's front gate and, when he dropped me off some 5 km later (no traffic), the meter read nearly Rs. 500. Obviously I refused to pay ("boss, your meter is crazy..."), and he didn't even try to push his luck ("ehehe, no problem sir, pay what you like!"), but alas, I had nothing smaller than Rs. 100 on me and he equally obviously had "no change".

I've had much better luck with the radio taxis patrolling Gurgaon, and they've finally introduced a few in Delhi itself. Now if they only expanded the fleet by, say, 1000x times...