For those of you with Americanised (ex. US) sensibilities of the slang usage of "getting around", this phrase in the title of this article is not about being the cause of successive "walks of shame". It's about the huge problem of transportation in India. I've been meaning to write about this issue for a while and it's taken me far too long to finally get down to it.
I've had the privilege and opportunity to live in different parts of our great country for extended periods and learn a little about the diversity that we are so proud of and is so oft recounted in the media and national day speeches. I am proud of it, this diversity of culture and language, religion and philosophy, ideas and professions, appearances and traditions. When it all harmoniously comes together, it's beautiful and one of the most powerful drivers of change one can ever experience. So far we've only just begun to see real attitude and social changes being addressed in the last 1 or 2 years.
But I continue to wonder why as a society, did we ever get used to mediocrity of services, in this case transport services. For example, the fact that almost all state bus transport agencies don't run their buses on time - why has this never angered us to the point that we demand it be rectified? And I'm not saying about just writing scathing editorials and registering complaints with the concerned authorities (which is of course essential and part of how we can improve our systems and hold officials responsible for their duties). But even after so many years of lackadaisical mismanagement by the transport operators and agencies, why have we not showered our public wrath that we are so potently and effectively capable of displaying (reference to the public outrage post the Regional Plan 2021 of Goa, Commonwealth scam in Delhi, gangrape in Delhi, etc.). Why this complacency? Is it because of our all-encompassing and ever tolerant philosophies of life that dictate our responses to even the unjust malpractices around us? Or again, when we've had the tough luck of traveling in the train compartments of the sleeper or general classes in one of the Indian Railways' unhallowed interstate expresses (not Rajdhani or Shatabdi class trains) and noticed how dirty they are - not just the toilets or floor - do we make sure we make the right noises after such a journey at the offices of the station manager or begin online petitions to castigate the Ralways' Minister for not ensuring clean hygienic trains? I think not. Now is this because the bulk of sleeper and general class passengers are what we call "lower strata" of society and after we hop off these trains we dust our shoulders and clothes in an act of purification and swear to ourselves 'never again will I travel "cattle-class"! ' Because who cares about the poor folks? Why should I anyways? There are NGO's to look after them, activists, charity organisations, government agencies, "pseudo-secular" & "minority-appeasing" political parties,... etc. Or is it really because we think of "them" as a class apart from "I" with unequal suffrage. Because my blood is redder than thine.
Another example of what most of us (especially those familiar with Delhi's streets) have witnessed or even partaken in is the unceremonial ceremony of waving down an autorickshaw. I had practiced it myself for years shamelessly. When you see a person trying to get an autorickshaw, the autorickshaw driver blatantly exploits the passenger by demanding the sum of money he will charge for ferrying the passenger to the destination, even though he is supposed to charge by the meter. When the person insists on paying by the meter the autorickshaw driver is ready to move on leaving the passenger stranded and that's when opportune, unscrupulous leeches like me have pounced on the driver saying I'll pay the price he asks and we zoom off in the auto. Just because I could afford to pay the price, and not because first-come-first-served. Essentially, if you have the money, you'll get served. In another example concerning the "gentle-manly" autorickshaw driver, he sometimes denies services to passengers based on the destination they request to be taken to. There again, the leech pounces to make hay while sun shines and zooms of to a more plush "lucrative destination" like M-Block market or Connaught Place. It's either pounce or perish, oh yes sir!
When will the day come when we begin to look at all these problems in our systems not from the historical casteist/elitist/egotistic perspective of self-centeredness where we think that if something doesn't affect us (because we can "afford" to go along with it, or because we don't belong to the class (caste) of people it affects) it doesn't concern us. Even if it affects the person standing next to me right now, or the poorer watchman who guards my lane at night. And even though we all know that it will one day affect me, if not directly then in ways I cannot even imagine, we still chose to be indifferent to such mediocrity of integrity of service providers, mediocrity of quality, mediocrity of safety, mediocrity (nay, very often deplorable inadequate inferiority) of everything our administration provides us.
The recent case of the Kolkata Police declaring a blanket ban on bicycles in the city is a classic example of the hard-bred unjust sense of equality we grow to accept in India (chalta hai yaar). And the people it most affects is the poorest (or the minority of environmentally savvy cyclists) who cycle around and even carry out their trade on bicycles. Instead of penalising polluting, fossil fuel guzzling private cars and non-public transport vehicles for congestion, the Traffic Police has found it not only suitable but just to impose this blanket ban without so much as even commissioning a congestion study by a traffic expert. Thankfully for NGO's like "Switch ON" who filed an RTI query on the issue, the lopsided judgement of the Traffic Police is now public knowledge and the bans stands null (although the traffic police still continue to harass cyclists). But the overall disease of unequality is rampant and also evidenced by the state of our pedestrian footpaths and walkways. It is so bad that, the general rule of thumb in India is that the moment one steps off a vehicle, the value of one's life diminishes exponentially. In some cities like Hyderabad, footpaths don't even exist, and even those that exist are in a very bad state, let alone the huge difference in levels of footpaths when walking from one building to another. It is so bad in many places that people have constructed concrete ramps from the road to the entrance of the buildings for cars to come in that they've sloped away the space left between the road and the premises' compound for a foothpath. And don't even talk about propriety. I cannot count the number of times I've cursed and cursed to find my way around a place because they blocked off the usually worn down trail at the side of a street for road repairs. They are always kind enough to make ample arrangements for cars and vehicles to find convenient detours, but the pedestrian is happily forgotten because he can hop, skip, jump (even fly!!) and find his way around the rubble, chaos and mess.
City transportation systems are the worst in India, and one cannot even begin to imagine the situation in rural India. During a trip to a village in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra (for which I had to take three buses to make the trip from Goa), I realised that to get out of the village, if one missed the two buses that plied there every day, one simply prayed and hoped to get a ride on a bullock cart, or a farmer's tractor. Luckily, in places like these the people step in - benevolent people who also have some sort of vehicles in these parts make it a point to pick up all people who need a ride on their way. The public and administration in cities have been so enamoured by the metro systems of the western world that they see the metro as the hallowed glittery solution to all cities' traffic problems. What most people don't bother to import are the bus transport management practices and technologies from the west. Buses are a lifeline and we must improve them not just technologically, but also the fleet management and traffic planning for these buses. A European city like Marseille for example on the French riviera has over 600 buses plying on 100 different routes criss-crossing a city of 240 km2 serving a population of about 0.85 million. Each line has about 3-4 buses plying per hour, and feeding into the metro system, tram network and boat services. And this is not the most prosperous city of France, or of Europe. But to be fair, even this city of mediocre European developmental standards does not compare to even the best in India in terms of GDP per capita. Noneteless, if we are to even make a skewed argument of say India's best with Europe's mediocre, the situation is very grim. People say Narendra Modi's Ahmedabad is the best in terms of infrastructure. So if we compare the roughly 800 buses (BRTS + regular buses) servicing the nearly 6 million population spread over 464 km2 of Ahmedabad (6 times populous and twice the size of Marseille) which mind you does not have a metro, tramway or suburban train service, it paints a very sad situation for those who simply want to get around the city, like students, salesmen, entrepreneurs, job-seekers, homemakers, the elderly, the average working class person. How does one do this!? Oh why bother, I've got a car and my friends have some form of personal conveyance. Problem settled. NO!! The problem has just got compounded. From feigning ignorance, one has conveniently progressed to a state of abdication of one's personal right to good public transport services. And in doing so, we have also muffled to voice of those who depend on it the most, because their voice is less louder than the collective common voice. Where is that fighting spirit of today's Indian youth who cannot stand for corruption, rampant rapes, injustice to Aarushi Talwar, and what have you??
We fail to realise that our rights (not just ours, but even those of people around us) are rights of the collective common that are bestowed on everyone by virtue of party to society irrespective of class, caste, creed, colour; even if it is not individually you and me who stand to gain directly from such rights. Society progresses, evolves when all members of society are respectful of each others rights and perform their duties when they are supposed to. Our duty to abide by the Indian constitution which demands we not practice unequality in any form is very clearly stated. But our zest to be dutiful and our zeal to commit to causes is very selective, dependent very often on the social mileage one can garner from performing a particular duty. If we all viewed our duties with equal importance as our rights, the country would progress so much on so many fronts. How can we get out of this malaise? How can we convince our governments, municipalities, panchayats to work for our development, without depending on a single political party (like Delhi's AAP, etc.) to make a revolution in Parliament? How can we use existing systems and legitimate means to get our voices heard to improve transport systems in India without embarking on an "Arab Spring"-type movement where democracy is held ransom, but by legitimately milking the systems provisions to the fullest (RTI, panchayati raj, municipal ombudsman, etc.)? Folks, how do we make it bloody work?!
(please give your feedback on the issue by commenting to this article)
I've had the privilege and opportunity to live in different parts of our great country for extended periods and learn a little about the diversity that we are so proud of and is so oft recounted in the media and national day speeches. I am proud of it, this diversity of culture and language, religion and philosophy, ideas and professions, appearances and traditions. When it all harmoniously comes together, it's beautiful and one of the most powerful drivers of change one can ever experience. So far we've only just begun to see real attitude and social changes being addressed in the last 1 or 2 years.
But I continue to wonder why as a society, did we ever get used to mediocrity of services, in this case transport services. For example, the fact that almost all state bus transport agencies don't run their buses on time - why has this never angered us to the point that we demand it be rectified? And I'm not saying about just writing scathing editorials and registering complaints with the concerned authorities (which is of course essential and part of how we can improve our systems and hold officials responsible for their duties). But even after so many years of lackadaisical mismanagement by the transport operators and agencies, why have we not showered our public wrath that we are so potently and effectively capable of displaying (reference to the public outrage post the Regional Plan 2021 of Goa, Commonwealth scam in Delhi, gangrape in Delhi, etc.). Why this complacency? Is it because of our all-encompassing and ever tolerant philosophies of life that dictate our responses to even the unjust malpractices around us? Or again, when we've had the tough luck of traveling in the train compartments of the sleeper or general classes in one of the Indian Railways' unhallowed interstate expresses (not Rajdhani or Shatabdi class trains) and noticed how dirty they are - not just the toilets or floor - do we make sure we make the right noises after such a journey at the offices of the station manager or begin online petitions to castigate the Ralways' Minister for not ensuring clean hygienic trains? I think not. Now is this because the bulk of sleeper and general class passengers are what we call "lower strata" of society and after we hop off these trains we dust our shoulders and clothes in an act of purification and swear to ourselves 'never again will I travel "cattle-class"! ' Because who cares about the poor folks? Why should I anyways? There are NGO's to look after them, activists, charity organisations, government agencies, "pseudo-secular" & "minority-appeasing" political parties,... etc. Or is it really because we think of "them" as a class apart from "I" with unequal suffrage. Because my blood is redder than thine.
Another example of what most of us (especially those familiar with Delhi's streets) have witnessed or even partaken in is the unceremonial ceremony of waving down an autorickshaw. I had practiced it myself for years shamelessly. When you see a person trying to get an autorickshaw, the autorickshaw driver blatantly exploits the passenger by demanding the sum of money he will charge for ferrying the passenger to the destination, even though he is supposed to charge by the meter. When the person insists on paying by the meter the autorickshaw driver is ready to move on leaving the passenger stranded and that's when opportune, unscrupulous leeches like me have pounced on the driver saying I'll pay the price he asks and we zoom off in the auto. Just because I could afford to pay the price, and not because first-come-first-served. Essentially, if you have the money, you'll get served. In another example concerning the "gentle-manly" autorickshaw driver, he sometimes denies services to passengers based on the destination they request to be taken to. There again, the leech pounces to make hay while sun shines and zooms of to a more plush "lucrative destination" like M-Block market or Connaught Place. It's either pounce or perish, oh yes sir!
When will the day come when we begin to look at all these problems in our systems not from the historical casteist/elitist/egotistic perspective of self-centeredness where we think that if something doesn't affect us (because we can "afford" to go along with it, or because we don't belong to the class (caste) of people it affects) it doesn't concern us. Even if it affects the person standing next to me right now, or the poorer watchman who guards my lane at night. And even though we all know that it will one day affect me, if not directly then in ways I cannot even imagine, we still chose to be indifferent to such mediocrity of integrity of service providers, mediocrity of quality, mediocrity of safety, mediocrity (nay, very often deplorable inadequate inferiority) of everything our administration provides us.
The recent case of the Kolkata Police declaring a blanket ban on bicycles in the city is a classic example of the hard-bred unjust sense of equality we grow to accept in India (chalta hai yaar). And the people it most affects is the poorest (or the minority of environmentally savvy cyclists) who cycle around and even carry out their trade on bicycles. Instead of penalising polluting, fossil fuel guzzling private cars and non-public transport vehicles for congestion, the Traffic Police has found it not only suitable but just to impose this blanket ban without so much as even commissioning a congestion study by a traffic expert. Thankfully for NGO's like "Switch ON" who filed an RTI query on the issue, the lopsided judgement of the Traffic Police is now public knowledge and the bans stands null (although the traffic police still continue to harass cyclists). But the overall disease of unequality is rampant and also evidenced by the state of our pedestrian footpaths and walkways. It is so bad that, the general rule of thumb in India is that the moment one steps off a vehicle, the value of one's life diminishes exponentially. In some cities like Hyderabad, footpaths don't even exist, and even those that exist are in a very bad state, let alone the huge difference in levels of footpaths when walking from one building to another. It is so bad in many places that people have constructed concrete ramps from the road to the entrance of the buildings for cars to come in that they've sloped away the space left between the road and the premises' compound for a foothpath. And don't even talk about propriety. I cannot count the number of times I've cursed and cursed to find my way around a place because they blocked off the usually worn down trail at the side of a street for road repairs. They are always kind enough to make ample arrangements for cars and vehicles to find convenient detours, but the pedestrian is happily forgotten because he can hop, skip, jump (even fly!!) and find his way around the rubble, chaos and mess.
City transportation systems are the worst in India, and one cannot even begin to imagine the situation in rural India. During a trip to a village in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra (for which I had to take three buses to make the trip from Goa), I realised that to get out of the village, if one missed the two buses that plied there every day, one simply prayed and hoped to get a ride on a bullock cart, or a farmer's tractor. Luckily, in places like these the people step in - benevolent people who also have some sort of vehicles in these parts make it a point to pick up all people who need a ride on their way. The public and administration in cities have been so enamoured by the metro systems of the western world that they see the metro as the hallowed glittery solution to all cities' traffic problems. What most people don't bother to import are the bus transport management practices and technologies from the west. Buses are a lifeline and we must improve them not just technologically, but also the fleet management and traffic planning for these buses. A European city like Marseille for example on the French riviera has over 600 buses plying on 100 different routes criss-crossing a city of 240 km2 serving a population of about 0.85 million. Each line has about 3-4 buses plying per hour, and feeding into the metro system, tram network and boat services. And this is not the most prosperous city of France, or of Europe. But to be fair, even this city of mediocre European developmental standards does not compare to even the best in India in terms of GDP per capita. Noneteless, if we are to even make a skewed argument of say India's best with Europe's mediocre, the situation is very grim. People say Narendra Modi's Ahmedabad is the best in terms of infrastructure. So if we compare the roughly 800 buses (BRTS + regular buses) servicing the nearly 6 million population spread over 464 km2 of Ahmedabad (6 times populous and twice the size of Marseille) which mind you does not have a metro, tramway or suburban train service, it paints a very sad situation for those who simply want to get around the city, like students, salesmen, entrepreneurs, job-seekers, homemakers, the elderly, the average working class person. How does one do this!? Oh why bother, I've got a car and my friends have some form of personal conveyance. Problem settled. NO!! The problem has just got compounded. From feigning ignorance, one has conveniently progressed to a state of abdication of one's personal right to good public transport services. And in doing so, we have also muffled to voice of those who depend on it the most, because their voice is less louder than the collective common voice. Where is that fighting spirit of today's Indian youth who cannot stand for corruption, rampant rapes, injustice to Aarushi Talwar, and what have you??
We fail to realise that our rights (not just ours, but even those of people around us) are rights of the collective common that are bestowed on everyone by virtue of party to society irrespective of class, caste, creed, colour; even if it is not individually you and me who stand to gain directly from such rights. Society progresses, evolves when all members of society are respectful of each others rights and perform their duties when they are supposed to. Our duty to abide by the Indian constitution which demands we not practice unequality in any form is very clearly stated. But our zest to be dutiful and our zeal to commit to causes is very selective, dependent very often on the social mileage one can garner from performing a particular duty. If we all viewed our duties with equal importance as our rights, the country would progress so much on so many fronts. How can we get out of this malaise? How can we convince our governments, municipalities, panchayats to work for our development, without depending on a single political party (like Delhi's AAP, etc.) to make a revolution in Parliament? How can we use existing systems and legitimate means to get our voices heard to improve transport systems in India without embarking on an "Arab Spring"-type movement where democracy is held ransom, but by legitimately milking the systems provisions to the fullest (RTI, panchayati raj, municipal ombudsman, etc.)? Folks, how do we make it bloody work?!
(please give your feedback on the issue by commenting to this article)
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