Flyovers And The Congress Rout In Delhi
By Vidyadhar Date
11 December, 2013
Countercurrents.org
The rout of the Congress in the assembly elections in Delhi can be seen in the context of the form of development it is obsessed with. Chief minister Sheila Diskhit had promised to build double decker flyovers to win votes. The trouble is such an approach basically ignores the needs of common people.That partly explains the defeat of the Congress party.
I was in Delhi at the time of the poll attending the 6th Urban Mobility India conference organized by the Central government’s urban development department. The venue was the General Manekshaw convention centre of the Indian army on the outskirts of Delhi, near Dhaula Kuan. Here was ample demonstration of what is wrong with urban transport planning.The 23 acre campus has parking space for some 700 cars but no access to public transport for more than a kilometer. One cannot even get an auto rickshaw here, not to speak of a bus. It is always an ordeal to reach this place and get out even with a car. Mr K.C. Sivaramakrishnan, former urban development secretary in Delhi, got lost when he was trying to reach it to deliver the keynote address at the conference two years ago.
The Manekshaw Centre is a lavishly built glass structure with a very high ceiling, looks extremely energy inefficient and is seldom used. It looks like a white elephant. The nearest Metro rail station Dhaula Kuan which is more than a km away, is another imposing structure with little public use. It caters only to the expensive airport Metro line which barely carries even 10 per cent of its capacity. One can see the emptiness as all compartments are visible from inside.
It does not connect both the terminals. One has to take a shuttle bus and spend another Rs 30 to go to the other terminal. The other Metro lines in Delhi are more widely used but are by their very technology very capital intensive and expensive to build and operate.
A forceful plea against the Metro system was made in the opening day’s keynote address by Mr Enrique Penalosa, a leading international exponent of bus transport, walking and public spaces and the Bus Rapid Transit system. Mr Kamal Nath, the urban development minister, who is a great enthusiast for the Metro system, did not wait to hear Mr Penalosa’s rousing speech citing the next day’s assembly elections as the valid reason. Considering the result of the election, the minister might as well have stayed on and he would have certainly benefited from the speech.
So basic problems are neglected. Not only is Manekshaw Centre inaccessible by pubic transport, it is extremely hazardous even to cross the road on foot to reach the venue because vehicles on the Gurgaon road move at breakneck speed .
But the problem is politicians are not interested in low cost or even cost-free solutions. They are interested in high cost, high tech, high energy consuming modes of transport like the Metro railway. The basic problem is there is a lack of a political will to promote public transport, as former urban development minister Jaipal Reddy pointed out some years ago.
Maharashtra’s home minister R.R. Patil too recently pleaded helplessness of politicians and the government in checking the growing number of motor cars which are creating a traffic bottleneck in cities. He called upon the media at a conference on urbanization convened by Loksatta, a leading Marathi daily, to create public opinion on the issue. We know building more roads is no solution but we cannot do anything about it, he said. Motorists on Malabar Hill attack the police who try to toe away vehicles blocking the road, the minister said.
But then what prevents his government from providing a little relief to pedestrians by building decent footpaths ? The contradiction was clear at the venue of the conference, the Vivanta Taj in upscale Cuffe Parade in Mumbai. There is no footpath on the western side of the road to the hotel. This is where it is needed most because fishermen and their little houses are on this side. There is more pedestrian traffic here than on the other wide which has some nice heritage mansions including the one where Mulk Raj Anand, novelist, used to live. But the trouble is the system bothers only about the comfort of motorists and the interests of the car lobby. Congress politicians are not only out of touch with the people but also international trends on transportation. The car is out and public transport is in. Several leading politicians in Europe ride the bicycle and make it a point to be seen with one. Has anyone ever heard of Rahul Gandhi riding a bicycle ? And his henchmen want to project him as a rebel and more modern than seniors in the party. He has typically imbibed the car culture in every way . He is known for following the Toyoto Way form of management , drawn from the management principles of the car manufacturer.
Politicians, instead of listening to people’s voices, are arrogantly driving motor cars and contemptuously treating any check on their lawless driving. Earlier this year, four members of the Maharashtra legislature assaulted in the legislature premises a police officer who had dared to catch an MLA for speeding on the Bandra Worli sea link. Earlier this month, Nitesh Rane, son of Maharashtra’s industries minister, Narayan Rane, and eight of his supports were arrested in Goa for allegedly ransacking a tool booth and assaulting the staff there.
On the very day, Nitesh Rane was enraged with the stopping of his car, one man fell off an overcrowded train in Mumbai and was killed. It shows how the political class is obsessed with the comfort of the motor car while being totally callous towards the need of the common people. The defeat in Delhi needs to be seen in that context.
Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the Era of Climate Change.
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