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Children Are Developing Smokers’ Lungs Thanks To Motor Cars

By Vidyadhar Date

21 September, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Children are developing smokers’ lungs because of intense pollution caused by motor vehicles, says Gurgaon’s joint traffic police commissioner Bharti Arora. She deserves support for her sensitivity and for organizing a car-free Gurgaon on Tuesay to coincide with the World Car Free day to be observed on September 22. Sadly, there has been no intiative from other metropolitan centres in the country though vehicular pollution and congestion are becoming horrendous.

It is also cheerful to note that Ms Arora will often cycle to work as part of the campaign to reduce the use of personal vehicles. We can hope that she can successfully emulate the example of the famous woman cop, the New York traffic commissioner Jannette Sadik Khan who often rides on bicycle, has checked vehicular use and promoted cycling and walking in New York.

It is quite remarkable that Ms Arora says we must take the city back from monsters causing pollution and that we will not accept a car-dominated society. She mentions this in the facebook page of the Gurgaon traffic police.

The facebook pages of traffic cops in other centres show no awareness of the car-free day on Tuesday. The record of Mumbai traffic police is the most shameful on this score. It has only a nominal facebook page and unbelievably its website is under construction for the last several days ! What kind of a smart city network we are going to have with such a pathetic performance when IT is supposed to be the main plank of smart cities.

The pages of the police of other centres alert cities about traffic jams and other issues. Jaipur does that in Hindi. They also take cognizance of complaints from the public.

It is heartening that the initiative has come from Gurgaon which is otherwise the most glaring example of everything that has gone wrong with our urban governance. Though it has very posh malls, gated communities of the rich and shining offices of multinationals, basic infrastructure like drainage and public transport is lacking. And this is a suburb of Delhi which shows how bankrupt basically the whole political leadership scenario has been over the years. It is a shame that Delhi is the most polluted city in the world.

Both the Congress and the BJP have shown an appalling neglect of public transport and have shamelessly pursued the path of motorization at the cost of common people. The ruling Aam Admi party in the Delhi metropolis should have shown better sensitivity since it claims to speak in the name of common people and as an IIT engineer chief minister Kejriwal should have known better.

It is encouraging that one IT company in Gurgaon has called upon its 2500 employees that September 22 will be a car-free day and employees will be provided buses for transport rather than the usual cabs and cars. There will be shuttle services to Metro stations. The CEO Manas Fuloria, Harvard trained, is a bicycle enthusiast himself and says building more flyovers is no solution to traffic problems.

Normally, the international annual car-free day does not get a big response. But the decision of the Paris administration to go car-free five days later on September 27 will be watched with interest as the authorities appear to be quite serious.

Michael Sandel,noted American philosopher, has deplored the American obsession with highways and cars and said this was corrosive of the community spirit. It is better to spend on schoos public transport, public health and playgrounds. Public good is important. Public discourse has come to evolve around personal rights and demands.

Sandel made the observation while delivering the keynote address at the American Planning Association. He deplored misplaced priorities. People have big private homes and small public spaces. In such a selfish environment, it was harder to build character. It is important to build solidarity, a community spirit, a spirit of sacrifice.

In India soon after independence there was a breach between common people’s needs and planning imposed from above . This was clear from the way Chandigarh was planned. It is now coming under increasing criticism for being very car-centric and its creator the top architect Corbusier is coming under growing attack for his fascist ideas on architecture and planning. It is a big study in granite, the avenues are too broad. While the world has appreciated the vitality of the Indian street, the planners persisted in imposing a road infrastructure that could only be justified in a mass motorization context. Here a historic split took place between the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru at the civic level.

City history researcher Ravi Kalia calls Chandigarh a fortress of privilege which lacks the bustle of the bazaar, the noise of Lahore, the intimacy of Delhi. It is a stay-at-home city. It ignored the pleasures of outdoor sleeping. Chandigarh failed in its primary social responsibility to rehabilitate the refugees after partition. Chandigarh showed over-eagerness to consume western aesthetic ideals and practices, said Spivak, the critic. Chandigarh was built like the American Capitol as an edifice of government power over citizens. Sunil Khilnani, noted scholar said Chandigarh was to be a glorious stage where the tableaux of the State was to be erected.

The same mindless dominance of the car is being imposed on the country. The National Transport DPC report has spoken out against this trend. Our cities historically are compact, people do not normally have to travel more than 5 km for their daily work. That is being changed. The poor are being made to travel farther and farther away, makes them poorer, their expenses go up. The mobility of the rich has increased as they can go anywhere by car over long distance. The poor are hit badly they cannot walk safely as cars have taken most space on the road, for the same reason they find it difficult to go by bicycle.

A car-free day will bring great relief to common people, it will vastly reduce air pollution, provide a lot of relief to pedestrians, save millions of rupees by way of reduced fuel use, decongest the road and it will be such a nice visual sight, so aesthetically pleasing if the roads are free from the monstrous traffic. All schemes involves some expenditure. This will cost nothing, in fact it will save money. Yet, our government and an extremely selfish elite does not want to accept restrictions on cars for even one day.

The same system treats common people with brutality. Common people fall into manholes throughout the country on a daily basis, getting badly injured and having to pay hefty medical bills. It pays attention only when someone influential is affected. So, the Delhi government’s own secretary of art and culture V.C. Pande fell into a manhole in Delhi’s upper class area near the governor’s residence last week. He has written to the chief minister saying he found three more open manholes in the area. This truly shows the extremely anti-people nature of our system.

(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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