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Sonia And Rahul Need To Do More Than Travel By A Bus

By Vidyadhar Date

11 November, 1012
Countercurrens.org

Mrs Sonia Gandhi, Congress president, and son Rahul Gandhi travelled a short distance by bus from New Delhi to Surajkund for a Congress meeting on November 9. This is interesting given the high flying style of the family, but it is little more than a publicity gesture considering that in actual practice their government is helping the automobile lobby, promoting personalized transport, neglecting and weakening public transport and humiliating pedestrians.

The role of other political parties is not much brighter. BJP’s president Nitin Gadkari, engulfed in numerous controversies, is an unabashed admirer of the highway lobby. He is fond of the quote that It is not because America is great that it has great roads but because America has great roads that America is great.

They are all obsessed with highways, flyovers and fancy cars and have little time for the problems of mobility of common people.

The defining image of Robert Vadra, Sonia’s son-in-law, in the wake of the land scandal, was a very macho, arrogant looking man riding a motor-bike. That image shows exactly what is wrong with India’s transport system, a naked and brash display of high powered personalized transport and celebration of speed for speed’s sake, an attitude that does not care a bit for other road users, especially public transport.

Indeed, Vadra showed his contempt for ordinary people in no uncertain terms when he called them mango people, a cruel description of ordinary people.And Shashi Tharoor, newly rehabilitated in the ministry, showed his contempt for economy class air travelers as cattle class. One can imagine the contempt these people have for ordinary , public transport users.

On the very day of their travel by bus, an editorial in Prahar, Marathi daily owned by a Congress minister, warned that the BEST bus undertaking in Mumbai will collapse any day like Kingfisher Airlines. BEST always had a reputation for being the best in the country. It is now in a serious decline. It is not just bad management by the Shiv Sena-led city administration. Callousness is visible all over. They do not even have the ordinary courtsey of providing basic facilities to commuters - like giving information at bus stops about the routes of buses. All we get are empty numbers.

There is enough reason to believe that the BEST is being systematically weakened. One should never forget the systematic destruction of public transport in the United States by the automobile lobby. Now, there is a proposal to allot space at bus depots in Mumbai for helipads for the vulgar rich and a good portion of the bus depot at Cuffe Parade was illegally used for the scandal-ridden Adarsh building which involves top army generals , ministers and bureaucrats. The deliberate weakening of BEST fits in well with the concerted drive to throw the poor out of Mumbai. Only those of the poor who are required to serve the interests of the rich will be tolerated. That seems to the overall plan.

The authorities are aware of the serious crisis of traffic jams but they are looking at the issue mainly from the point of view of motorists and the car and road lobby. So instead of coming out with real solutions like curbing car use, heavy investment in public transport and infrastructure for pedestrians, they are coming up with half hearted measures, paying lip service to the cause of public transport. That is because the authorities have no political will whatsoever to take on the automobile lobby.

I was in Pune on November 1 when the call for a No Car day was given by the daily Sakal Times and it was supported by all political parties. Many volunteers were on streets and a lot of additional buses were run and motorists were urged to use these. But not many motorists responded. And that exposes the oft repeated claim and lie uttered by several motorists who say ` give us a good public transport and we will not use cars.’ The fact is the car is more of a status symbol for them and they just do not want to give up the use of the car. So one finds people using cars even for short distances which can be covered on foot and require no public transport.

My journalist friend Naresh Fernandes gives me an interesting example about people visiting two historic churches in Bandra, the upscale suburb of Mumbai. The Sunday collection is more in St Peter’s than in St Andrew’s. That is because the former has car parking space and the rich prefer to go there. They take their cars even though the church is very close to their house.

And the system is brutal towards pedestrians. This is visible all over but especially in front of Mantralaya, the state government headquarters in Mumbai, which makes it all the more ironic. I have been noticing this as a journalist for three decades. And it is getting worse. I had this experience on November 9. I could not safely walk on the pedestrian crossing even though the green signal was on because cars were merrily allowed to take a left turn and drive speedily . And this goes on all over, all the time. The traffic police have thrown up their arms saying that violations by motorists are so numerous that they just cannot deal with the issue. So, there is no protection of the Constitutional right to life even in front of government headquarters.

The authorities are pandering to the motor car and highway lobby and in the process mocking the national urban transport policy of 2007 which seeks a greater role for pedestrians and public transport. Recently, I noticed this phenomenon at the National Centre for the Performing Arts at Nariman Point, Mumbai, during the international film festival. The road leading to the Jamshed Bhabha theatre had no space for pedestrians though motor cars were visible everywhere. The footpath on one side was closed to pedestrians with potted plants. On the other side cars were parked for this none other than the municipal corporation was guilty. First it was guilty of not providing a footpath on one side in complete violation of civic norms and then it compounded the crime by officially allotting that space for car parking. It is not the job of the civic body or anyone else for that matter to provide for car parking. It is not a right by any means. Yet, the politicians, bureaucrats and engineers and traffic police are servile to the car and builder lobby.

Their abject failure to act against lawless motorists is making life extremely hazardous for other road users.

The profile of the killers on the road has substantially changed in the last few years. Truck drivers with little education used to be mainly responsible for road accidents in the past. Now, the killers are mainly upper class, college- educated arrogant and often drunk. They drive more recklessly as technology has made cars safer for drivers but at the same time they have become deadly for other road users, especially pedestrians.

On the very day a young NRI woman Nooriya Haveliwala was sentenced to jail for five years for drunken driving and killing two people in the early hours of the morning three years ago, a drunk woman was reported ramming her fancy BMW cars into four people travelling in an auto rickshaw in Mumbai. So one is not safe anywhere in Mumbai at any time from arrogant motorists. Nooriya showed some repentance. Many motorists appear to assume that they have a licence if not a right to run over others since they think it is the others who are at fault.

A drunk young man was driving a Mercedes car at an unbelievably high 120 km per hour near Vasai in the distant suburb of Mumbai on October 23 when he crashed into a barrier put by the police to catch speeding vehicles. He and his drunk friends escaped with relatively minor injuries because the airbags in the car were activated by the impact and provided a cushion to them.

In this case, other people were not victims. But otherwise, it is mainly a kind of class war on road with the poor becoming victims of aggressive, reckless driving. Because the drivers are rich or with political connections the police are often quick to give them a clean chit and blame instead the pedestrian who is the victim. But the drivers now drive so brashly that there is no way the innocent pedestrians can be blamed for getting killed and the corrupt police force can find no excuse to blame the pedestrian.

But now the traffic police themselves are feeling the heat from this arrogant class. Over 10 incidents of traffic police being assaulted while on duty have occurred in Mumbai in the past few months. So, now the police commissioner Satyapal Singh has decided to arm them with batons. Recently, a traffic constable was assaulted by some men because he had the temerity to stop a driver who was close to a Shiv Sena leader.

Aggression on roads is abetted by the constant glamourisation of the motor car and speed and by Formula 1 racing endorsed by the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and M.S. Dhoni, star cricketers.

Last month the car of Rashmi Thackeray, wife of Shiv Sena executive president Udhav Thackeray was involved in a serious accident in which two motor cycle riders were badly injured. Only Mumbai Mirror newspaper reported that Udhav Thackeray gave some monetary help to the injured which suggests that his wife’s driver was at fault. But most newspapers reported as if the motorcycle had run into the car. It was a very unusual gesture by Thackeray which may be because he did not want any complications when father Bal Thackeray is ailing and Udhav himself was to undergo an angioplasty in the next few days. But otherwise, the fact is that the rich literally get away with murder on roads leaving the poor dead or severely handicapped, and made to pay for their own medical expenses. In the process the poor also lose their livelihood. Can the system become more callous and cruel than this ?

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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