Shahrukh Khan’s Insensitive Remarks On Road Congestion

By Vidyadhar Date

29 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

It was very insensitive of film superstar Shahrukh Khan to say that he loves being caught in a traffic jam. That is the only place he gets free time for himself, he can use his internet and so on. Unfortunately, for ordinary people, a traffic jam adds to the horror of the daily commute, standing in an overcrowded train or bus. Apart from the discomfort of standing, now they inhale more pollution and suffocation. And ordinary people have to pay much more for their auto rickshaw or taxi ride because of the jam.

Those who know something about road traffic have known all along that some of the rich are not particularly bothered about jams as a car is a second home for many with all the comforts inside the vehicle and some even use it as an office with easy access to the telephone and the internet. This is possible because of the availability of drivers at a relatively low cost. So, the owner can relax and do his or her work.

But generally motorists are not so brazen about it and often bitterly complain about traffic jams, cursing other motorists, never recognizing that they themselves are contributing to the jam. Shahrukh represents the worst form of inequality in the transport sector. By his own admission in an interview to the Hindu’s Mumbai launch edition of November 28, he said regularly travels all over the world, often by his private jet.

The eminent French film maker Jean Luc Godard uses the road traffic jam as a symbol of the failure of capitalism in his 1967 film Weekend. I think it is a terrific allegory.

The film is a dark, comic, apocalyptic vision of the end of capitalist society.

The consumer society destroys itself in automobile wrecks. It depicts how a failed materialistic society rushes headlong into angry, violent anarchy . The ten-minute tracking shot of the automobiles, the traffic jam, fuelling of anger, honking of horns the burning of cars, motorists attacking each other is considered one of the greatest in cinema history. The film is a biting, raucous satire on capitalism and consumer society.

A hysterical woman runs back to her car, not to help the dying but to rescue her Hermes handbag. People revert to a nasty primitivism, resort to violence. The bored and apathetic heart of the bourgeois is never far from acting out its most homicidal fantasies. This is an over-consuming bourgeoisie (filmworld.com).

Shahrukh belongs to a commercial film world vastly different from Godard’s but he would do well to get some acquaintance with this film and its concept. Two other films stars and his neighbours in Bandra in Mumbai and cricket star Sachin Tendulkar who lives a little distance away in Bandra have also shown deep insensitivity in respect of traffic and automobiles and are very bad role models in that respect.. Salman Khan is involved in a case of rash, drunken driving, causing death and injury near his home in Bandra and the trial has already dragged on for over a decade. Aamir has glorified dangerous stunts on motor bikes and while the stunts may be attractive on the screen, such stunts are a real menace in real life.

When Tendulkar lived in the less posh area in Bandra near the Relclamation, he had an unusual complaint. A builder had denied him and others in the building the promised short-cut access road to the Bandra Reclamation flyover.

Few people are as mobile as Tendulkar.He has a fleet of cars including the racing car Ferrari which was involved in a prolonged controversy with his seeking import duty exemption. Pramod Mahajan used his influence as union minister to secure the exemption to Tendulkar who is rolling in wealth, yet sees it fit to seek such exemptions and also plot of land for building a house for him.

Leaders like Mahajan were also obsessed with elitist schemes so that the upper class can have improved mobility. He had sought votes for the BJP with the promise to build the Bandra-Worli sea link .

The point is that the mobility of the common people is being reduced while that of the rich is growing due to increased access to motor cars and more roads. Yet, ironically it is the powerful who are complaining and seeking their own mobility . At the same time they are not raising any voice in support of the disadvantaged. How can they ? If you look carefully, it will be clear that it is the motorists , callous municipal officials and unsympathetic traffic police who are actually impeding the mobility of the poor.

Film star Aishwarya Rai lived in the same building as Tendulkar’s before her marriage. I know the area around the building and the main problem that should attract everyone’s attention is that it needs footpaths which are totally lacking. The Mount Mary church is very close to Tendulkar’s building of those days and thousands visit it during the annual fair. If the municipal body and traffic police have any sense, they should have given high priority for footpaths in this area .

Now, Tendulkar lives in his own bungalow on a road which does not have a footpath. As a Rajya Sabha member should he not provide this little amenity to the area ? But the car loving heroes seldom bother about these basics.

Shahrukh lives in a big mansion at the popular prime site of Land’s End in Bandra in complete privacy behind high walls. It is naturally a huge area but it typical of a section of the elite to intrude on public land.

He had built an illegal ramp built on a public road outside his luxurious mansion to park his make-up van . It was demolished by the municipal corporation a few months ago after widespread protests.

The authorities acted only because the BJP MP Poonam Mahajan took up the issue as it had a big publicity potential. The film star reimbursed the cost of some Rs two lakh for demolition of the illegal ramp only after much media glare.

Instead of removing this illegality in the last several years which restricted access to thousands of pilgrims to the famous Mount Mary church, the police actually barricaded the road and causing inconvenience to thousands of people.

The encroachment was too blatant. But authorities take no action against countless buildings throughout the country whose ramps for cars extend to the road outside, obstruct the footpath and impede millions of pedestrians. So, a major inconvenience to pedestrians nationwide can be tackled through a little enforcement. But politicians, who rush in cases like Shahrukh Khan’s, do not care about these cases.

Such obstructions are clear to the naked eye all over if only one cares to walk around and observe. As a regular walker in Bandra I notice that the Taj Mahal group’s Land’s End hotel, just a few feet away from Shahrukh’s bungalow, has such an intrusion. This hotel and its private guard have turned a part of the public road leading to the Bandra fort into its private property.

And how heavily the rich are subsidized by the government even as it pounces on poor slum dwellers and hawkers. Shahrukh Khan, rolling in wealth, has been paying only Rs 2325 per year for a huge plot of land . with unrestricted sea view and breeze. That was the amount till recently. I do not know the latest. Ordinary people have to trek for miles just to inhale that bit of fresh air and steal a view of the sea . That is if they are not arrested by the police for holding hands of their loved ones.

Poonam Mahajan and other politicians have taken little cognizance of the absence of footpaths in several areas which cause inconvenience to millions of pedestrians. So, while the municipal corporation acted against Shahrukh it criminally fails in its basic function of constructing footpaths. Like Poonam, her predecessor Priya Dutt, too failed to take up the issue. There is no footpath on the Nergis Dutt road on Pali Hill where she lives and which is named after her mother, film star and former MP. Or on the entire Pali Hill which sees heavy motorized traffic. One politician who is a model in terms of traffic is Bandra corporator Asif Zakaria of the Congress. I often see him go around on a bicycle in the morning and last week I saw him doing exercise in Joggers Park.
And why on earth does the Maharashtra government need Rs 100 crores from the Bloomberg Foundation of New York for organizing road safety in Mumbai ? Road safety requires commitment from the government, not funds from abroad. I have been walking in front of Mantralaya, the state government, headquartes, for the last 30 years as a journalist, and I see that crossing the road even with the green signal is hazardous as the policemen posted right there take no action against offending motorists. So, there is a complete breakdown of law and order right in front of Mantralaya.

Two former cabinet secretaries, B.G. Deshmukh and S Rajgopal, used to live right across the road and several bureaucrats and ministers too continue live in the vicinity. The trouble is the worthies seldom walk and so the situation gets worse.

It is not rare to find a traffic policeman vigorously asking vehicles to keep coming even when there is a green signal for pedestrians. So the police are actually a threat to your life, rather than your protectors.

There are basic problems of governance in the urban transport sector in India. Except for a few officials in the urban development ministry in Delhi, the ministry in charge of urban transport, there is little awareness at the bureaucratic level in the state governments about the need for promoting public transport and discouraging private motor cars and providing safety.

The more sad 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 is done to tame the monster.

(Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the era of climate change. Walking, cycling, public transport need priority.)