Motor Cars are Pampered While Rickshaws Are Criminalised
By Vidyadhar Date
10 October, 2012
Countercurrents.org
One can park a private motor car on the road in New Delhi without paying any charge but an auto rickshaw driver or a cycle rickshaw puller dare not do that. The authorities immediately take action against him. This is quite discriminatory, points out Mr S Sundar, a member of the national transport development policy committee, headed by Mr Rakesh Mohan. Mr Sundar is also a distinguished fellow of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute).
The discrimination exists on a national scale. In Mumbai, there is virtually no space for auto rickshaws to park though these are public vehicles.. But the government has gone out of its way to give huge incentives to the builder lobby to provide parking for private cars. It is a scandal that runs into hundreds of crores of rupees.
There are several other major instances of discrimination, experts point out. The rickshaws are a major mode of transport for the common people all over India but they are criminalized and despite growing demand for their use and the authorities severely restrict their number. On the other hand there is no restriction on the number of private motor cars that can be registered and driven on the road. The government is in fact grossly encouraging manufacturing of more cars , building more flyovers and roads for them in total violation of the national urban transport policy. For a minor violation, a cycle rickshaw is seized, even crushed and dumped. But the authorities are totally servile before the automobile lob by. In fact, arrogant car drivers are increasingly attacking traffic constables in Mumbai.
Mr S Sundar said the government is investing in big ticket transport projects. There is massive investment in the Delhi Metro train project with subsidy which works out at nearly 1000 U.S. dollars per passenger. Experts say it would make more sense to get much better returns on investment through low cost measures like putting on the road more buses, promoting the Bus Rapid Transit system and improving facilities for pedestrians. Pedestrians, the silent majority, need to get together and assert themselves, said Glynda Bathan-Baterina, deputy executive director, CleanAir Initiative for Asian Cities.
In Delhi a shockingly high number of 5,000 new cars are registered daily, points out Mr Kulwant Singh, regional adviser, United Nations Human Settlement Programme. Actually, the private motor cars cause traffic congestion. They far outnumber rickshaws in any town or city. But it is the rickshaws which are blamed by the government agencies for congestion. The automobile lobby is really powerful.
In fact, the congestion caused by cars imposes a very stiff financial burden on ordinary people travelling by auto rickshaws or taxies as their bill goes up sharply as the vehicles plod through heavy traffic. But this is never taken into account by consumer bodies. In Mumbai these organizations are up in arms against the increase in the fare of taxies and auto rickshaws which came into being last week. They are targeting rickshaw drivers, constantly complain that they are rude and refuse to ply to some areas. But these consumer groups never never raise their voice against the automobile lobby.
A taxi driver in Mumbai could operate for 120 km per day in 1996. Now due to congestion imposed by an unchecked proliferation of cars, the driver can operate for only about 75 km. This reduces the driver’s income and sustainability, points out Maharashtra’s transport commissioner V.N.More.
Although auto rickshaws, cycle rickshaws and other modes of informal transport cater to a large number of people in the country, they are conspicuously neglected in transport plans and policies and seldom form part of any serious discussion on transport issues. So a workshop held in Delhi last week by TERI and UN-Habitat with senior planners, bureaucrats and activists and environmentalists on this issue was desperately needed and was perhaps the first of its kind in India.
Sadly, urban transport has remained a Constitutional and institutional orphan and it has not received enough attention, pointed out S.K. Lohia, joint secretary in the ministry of urban development. The poor have to spend as much as 30 per cent of their income on transport and are the worst hit by inadequate planning for their needs. Informal transport is all the poor an afford, but even this is not cheap.
Even the formal modes of transport like buses and trains are poorly developed in India. Till seven years ago only 20 cities in India had public bus services. Others relied entirely on informal modes like rickshaws despite their huge populations and area. It is only with the introduction of the Jawaharlal Nehru national urban renewal mission (JNNURM) in 2005 that 65 cities now have formal modes of transport. But even these are extremely inadequate as in Mumbai where the BEST Undertaking is facing a crisis due to the government’s apathy to public transport.
There is need for technological innovation and research in informal transport and greater investment in public transport, said Dr R.K. Pachauri, director general of TERI, Nobel peace prize winner and chairperson of the inter-government panel on climate change.
Anvita Arora, architect and director of Innovative Transport Solutions Technology, said planners wanted to ban informal pubic transport modes like rickshaws when in fact they needed to be encouraged because they were more flexible, affordable, met a vital public need, had a good frequency and were run with private initiative without government funding.
Rickshaws reached where formal modes of transport like buses and trains could not and needed to be seriously taken into account in the planning process, said Dr Akshima Ghate, a fellow at the Centre for Research in Urban Transport and Transport Solutions at TERI.
Fortunately, some activists are organizing cycle rickshaw pullers, improving their lives and working conditions. They include Navdeep Asija, a civil engineer, who has organized rickshaws in Fazilka in Punjab on the border with Pakistan, and in other towns, Pradip Kumar Sarmah, who started a Rickshaw Bank and has done pioneering work in Assam, Irfan Alam, an MBA, from Bihar, and Rajendra Ravi in Delhi. Ravi has written a book on rickshaw pullers in Hindi Rickshaw Ek Mahagatha. They are all now getting increasing attention from several research, management and social institutions. Ramesh Prabhu, chartered ccountant and MBA from the Indian school of business, Hyderabad, is organizing auto rickshaw drivers in Bangalore to better the quality of their lives and achieving environmental upgradation.
Mr Dunu Roy of Hazards Centre, New Delhi, said no amount of improvement in vehicle emission technology or traffic management schemes are going to help unless the number of cars on the road is reduced.
The government’s elitist and anti-people attitude in the transport sector is best illustrated by the fact that while it is aggressive in the proposal for building an international airport at Panvel near Mumbai, it has denied a simple bus shelter outside the busy Panvel railway station. A signature campaign by senior citizens is finally making the callous authorities see reason.
Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the era of climate change. Walking, cycling, public transport need priority. Email [email protected]
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