Terrorism Beyond Charlie Hebdo, Terrorism Of Motorists
By Vidyadhar Date
18 January, 2015
Countercurrens.org
The recent terrorist shooting of cartoonists in Paris and of school children in Peshawar needs to be strongly condemned. But if one looks at the numbers, far more people are killed by motor vehicles on roads in India than by Islamic terrorism. But few want to talk about the terrorism on the roads by private vehicles because it is inflicted by the upper class and in a way by the administration itself. They have unleashed on the masses a massive motorization without providing any worthwhile safety net for the victims who are mainly the poor, pedestrians, the young and little children. The ruling class needs to take note of this even as it hypocritically observes a road safety week in India from January 11.
Freedom of expression is , no doubt, important but our chattering classes do not show the same enthusiasm for the right to life of ordinary citizens After all, several of the killers on the roads come from the upper class. Motorists are among the most callous, the most uncivilized people. They always slavishly talk about the good life in the West. But while in the West motorists generally come to a halt and give right of way on seeing a pedestrians, in India drivers actually come charging at you. Try crossing the road anywhere in India with a child in arms. It can be really terrifying. Even at a pedestrian crossing.
The massacre of the innocent and the poor on roads in India is being ignored for the same reason as the massacre of nearly 2000 poor people carried out in Nigeria at the same time as the Paris massacre. The reason is that most victims in India are poor and so are considered quite expendable, their lives do not matter one bit to our upper class. More people are killed on roads in India than in any other nation and more and the tragedy gets more grim every year. Year after year the government is exposed internationally through statistics which can no longer by hidden. A road death is a State responsibility. This is internationally accepted. It is only the exposure of our shameful record at the international level that seems to prompt the government do something to reduce the number of deaths.
The more wicked part is that the responsibility of safety of children is being placed by the ruling class on poor little children and not on motorists or the senseless car-dominated pattern of traffic. The authorities eat out of the hands of the automobile lobby so nothing must be done to hurt this lobby.
I saw this telling spectacle on Linking Road in Bandra West in Mumbai on January 11. Poor children from a primary school in Bandra East carried placards asking children to walk on skywalks or on footpaths. The placard carrying kids were organized by an international NGO as part of an Equal Streets campaign.
As part of this campaign every Sunday morning half the width of the main road in the upper class suburbs of Bandra, Khar, Santa Cruz West is closed to vehicular traffic and people can walk freely, have fun, play games, dance on the street. It is no doubt laudable. But this is mainly a case of upper class assertion of their claim to the street so they can have fun. Most of these people in real life make a nuisance of themselves on other days by driving recklessly, mindlessly parking their cars.
The sheer dishonesty and hypocrisy of this class is visible all over. A little distance away , parallel to Linking Road is the Dr Ambedkar road where there is no footpath at all though it has heavy traffic and the upper class lives there. This causes immense hardship to ordinary citizens. This is the picture all over Mumbai and in fact all over the country. And they are asking kids to walk on footpaths, which do not exist, and on skywalks, which are ugly, wasteful, and a severe punishment for ordinary people so that the motorists can have all the fun on the road.
So while the elite wants eat the cake, it denies bread to the common people. The Equal Streets idea, launched by the elite is good, but in its present format it means only that some people are equal and others are third rate citizens. The scheme will make sense only when in daily life every day common citizens get equal access to roads and the monopoly of the arrogant motorist lobby is curbed to start with and then sternly put down.
The observing of the road safety week is an hypocritical exercise because the government itself has not been serious about the issue for the last several decades.
Maharashtra’s chief minister Devendra Fadanavis while opening the week spoke of tightening the driving licensing system and union public works minister Nitin Gadkari talks of upgrading laws for road safety. That is fine. But the government is not implementing even the present laws. It needs to start from its own headqauarters where traffic rules are shamefully ignored by motorists right in front of traffic police in white dress and other police in their khaki who are stationed in large numbers outside Mantralaya.
I had a repetition of an experience of the last several years at this site when on January 11 I could not cross the road even when the pedestrian signal had turned green because vehicles stop right on the crossing and go even beyond. When I brought this to the attention of a police sub inspector sitting in a chair, he seemed to have no idea at all that vehicles violate basic rules right in front of him.
The problem is that the administration simply has no political will whatsoever to oppose the powerful lobby of motorists and motor car manufacturers and it does not care a damn for pedestrians.
Chief minister Fadanavis has begun well by seeking to curb parking on roads in Mumbai where the rich want to park cars without paying any money at all. They are already up in arms and these include people from Colaba and Churchgate who have easy access to public transport.
It is true that vehicles, other than motor cars, are also a meance when it comes to road deaths. But motor cars are the main culprits. This is clear every day when one encounters the wanton killing of the poor by rich and drunk drivers.
I have been attending the urban mobility conference of the government of India in Delhi for the last five years and it is clear that while proper noises are made on the dais, little improvement is taking place on the streets. In fact, things are getting worse. On a positive note the government guys have woken up after a slumber of several decades are now finally accepting that public transport has to be given priority. But in practice common people, buses and non motorized transport are being marginalized while the private car gets the priority.
There is absolute callousness at all levels. All this talk of smart cities and seamless transport and smart travel is an utter fraud. This has always been obvious. But let me cite on example from Delhi itself. During one day of the recent conference I was standing on the bridge of the New Delhi railway station to take a local train to Nizamuddin. Strangely, there is no electronic public display system for these trains anywhere. Imagine this is in the nation’s capital. So one has to make a guess on which platform the train will come and wait for the public loudspeaker system. Many people like me were waiting for a long time. And then to rub salt into injury there is a notice on the bridge which says that standing on the bridge is punishable with a fine of Rs. 500. Can anything be more insulting ? Is this the way we treat our commuters in the Capital ? One can imagine the humiliation inflicted on common people elsewhere in the country.
Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the era of climate change. Walking, cycling, public transport need priority.
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