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| Ajai Shukla: My way on the highway | | None of the agents of change seems to be aware that method can overcome madness on the roads |
| Ajai Shukla / New Delhi Dec 29, 2009, 00:19 IST |
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Most mornings, between 9 and 10 am, accompanied by our playful mutts, Sandy and Kaalu, my wife and I jog inside a large green park that adjoins the controversial Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor next to New Delhi’s Greater Kailash. Since the BRT corridor opened some months ago, cuddling couples on the park benches are joined everyday by uniformed constables from the Delhi Traffic Police, leisurely reading the daily newspapers.
With the police preoccupied with news, the traffic outside snarls and unsnarls in its own quotidian rhythm. My wife often echoes the drivers’ curses: we should report these #*@^ing cops. Nonsense, I reply; they could be reading my articles! Besides, our park provides refuge to just a handful of constables. If Dr Manmohan Singh or Mr Chidambaram really wanted to see policemen goofing off, the National Archives (just a few hundred metres from the ministers’ offices) is a favourite locale for on-duty policemen to snooze in large numbers on the shady lawns.
Last week, though, driving from Ranthambore National Park to Delhi on National Highway No 8, I found it harder to brush away emerging India’s sorriest truth: that the money that the government throws at road infrastructure is being drowned out by a deluge of ill-conditioned drivers and an absolute lack of road-rule enforcement. And while the government is prepared to sink zillions into new roads, it is unwilling or unable to impose order on them.
Driving conditions on NH-8 (like almost everywhere in India) are best described as anarchic. Flatbed trailers, moving at 50 kmph, occupy the fast lane; other heavy-vehicle drivers, emboldened perhaps by purchases from the liquor vends all along the highway, overtake them at about 51 kmph. These tortuous manoeuvres are enlivened by tractor-trailers coming at you head-on, their headlights blazing in a well-understood signal: stand aside, or you’re dead.
In this free-for-all, there are no sheriffs, only Indians; few policemen are visible and certainly no Highway Patrol. The result: on a perfectly good four-lane toll expressway (globally, traffic averages 100-120 kmph on such roads) it took me over four hours to cover 240 kilometres. For that dubious privilege I paid a combined sum of Rs 167 at four tollbooths.
None of India’s policy-makers have publicly recognised that the nihilism of India’s roads could entirely negate enhancements in road infrastructure. Never has any Central or state government launched a concerted drive to regulate roads, or even proposed doing so. And the national media, normally quite willing to take up causes, has never launched a campaign for better driving and policing. The media’s coverage of accidents, in fact, parallels the police’s: it is always the bigger vehicle’s fault. A scooter never swerves into the path of a bus; it is invariably the bus that ploughs down the scooter.
Government structures parallel government attitudes. Of the two wings in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways — the Roads Wing (which controls the building and maintenance of roads) and the Transport Wing (which deals with motor vehicle legislation, taxation, insurance, and road safety) — the latter, unsurprisingly, is a stepchild.
Why is there so little impetus from policy-makers, press and the public on the need to translate improving roads into a smoother flux of people and goods? One reason, perhaps, is the Indian tendency of complicating the elementary. Instead of simply enforcing road discipline, it is intellectually sexier to frame macro plans for widening the Golden Quadrilateral, setting time targets and arranging for the vast outlays needed for construction to go ahead.
Then there are financial interests, with the contractor mafia, the inspector mafia and the director mafia all making their money from the huge outlays that the Roads Wing handles. While the Roads Wing action generates money, inaction by the Transport Wing feeds a wider set of beneficiaries. Any reforms in legislation and enforcement would threaten an entire universe of patronage in licensing, ticketing, and special courts for road violations.
Furthermore, exception for those who drive while travelling abroad, few Indians — including those responsible for road rules — have any idea about how other countries organise their public thoroughfares. While I lived and worked in Mozambique — then the world’s least developed country according to the UN Human Development Index — I was abashed to find the traffic as orderly as in any developed country. That was equally true of all the other post-colonial African states in the region. It would be worth examining how they graduated to a method while we have only madness.
Read Delhi’s Traffic Regulations (http://transport.delhigovt.nic.in/transport/tr1f.htm) to know what I mean. Consisting of just a page or two of basic instructions (sample: DO NOT DRIVE BACKWARDS longer than necessary), there is no elaboration of such fundamental concepts as lane driving.
It is time for a revolution. But none of the agents of change — the government, the judges, the lawmakers, the press, the police, and certainly not the public — seems to be aware that method can overcome madness on the roads. A leadership initiative is needed, but is nowhere in sight. Ideas, anyone?
ajaishukla.blogspot.com
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