THIS being an election year, one can understand the ruling political party’s desire to put up a rally of the kind that was held at Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi last Tuesday. One can also understand how big a task it is to organise and ensure a good turnout at such a rally, ferrying tens of thousands of people to the venue.

But is it right or ethical to deny people access to public transport for two to three days by commandeering or ordering the police and transport authorities to forcibly ‘hire’ hundreds if not thousands of privately-owned public transport vehicles for bringing people to such a rally?

Aren’t there rules against the government machinery being misused to arm-twist private transporters to supply their vehicles for ferrying people to the venue of a rally?

Besides, is it considered democratic to force people like school teachers to attend a rally by blackmailing them with possible disciplinary action if they do not?

The fact that a government is responsible to the people not to a political party appears to have been lost in the effort to show a good turnout at last Tuesday’s rally to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Leh Expressway project by the president.

Rallies and politics may be part and parcel of democracy, but should they be conducted at the expense of the welfare and convenience of the people? Democracy and politics are supposed to improve the lives of the people, not make it worse.

Not only commuters, transporters and teachers in the twin cities were inconvenienced and harassed due to the rally, people in other cities in this region like Taxila, Gujar Khan, Sohawa, Mandra and Jhelum also suffered because hundreds of public transport vehicles from these cities had reportedly also been pulled off the roads for the March 27 rally.

Since this is an election year, and it is expected that the ruling party will be organising more of such rallies in order to show grassroots support for it, one can imagine the hardship that is going to be caused to the public at large.

Aren’t there any provisions in our laws that enable people to take the authorities to task over the suffering caused to them in this manner? In India, where the authorities and political parties are also known to misuse public transport vehicles for ferrying people to rallies, a former high court justice had once suggested that commuters could sue the authorities for compensation over the hardship caused to them!

If supposing the public transport system in the twin cities was being run by modern bus companies, foreign or locally owned or both, could their buses have been similarly commandeered by the authorities for ferrying people to rallies as it is being done with the existing wagons?

In the past five years, several key roads in the twin cities, like Islamabad Highway, Margalla Road, Murree Road, etc., have been upgraded while the government has also recently begun and announced a plethora of other road improvement projects, the latest of which is the Rs17 billion Leh Expressway.

Contrary to this apparent eagerness to improve roads (although many other roads are still in a deplorably neglected condition), the government has been slow to establish a better and more reliable public transport system for the people. The existing low capacity and rickety wagons and Suzuki vans, which tend to charge passengers at will and not complete their routes, are hardly the stuff of which a modern public transport system is made up.

Apart from the fact that these vehicles cause greater pollution, since more of such smaller vehicles are needed on the road to ferry commuters, the inadequacies of this existing transport service has prompted tens of thousands of people to buy their own cars and motorcycles, thus resulting in even more pollution, in addition to traffic congestion on the roads and acute shortage of parking space.

Even inter-city travel within the country has improved considerably in recent years with the introduction of modern air- conditioned coaches owned by both foreign and local companies. Why does it seem so difficult for us to introduce and establish a simple but decent bus service in the twin cities to cater for the tens of thousands of people who commute daily for work, school, recreation or other businesses?

The wagons and Suzuki vans need not be completely taken off the roads even if the bus system is introduced. Commuters who still prefer to patronise these smaller vehicles ought to be given the choice to do so.

An attempt to introduce a more efficient public transport system in the twin cities was made in 2000 with the introduction of the Varan buses. But the Varan buses were soon mired in controversy and the company eventually went off the roads in February 2005. Since then, repeated promises by the government that an alternative reliable bus system will be introduced have not materialised, and thus the public is still deprived of access to a more efficient public transport system.

In a newspaper report last week about yet another apparent attempt to introduce what has now become the elusive modern bus system in the twin cities, it was stated that the Rawalpindi City District Government was “uncertain about the solution” to the transport problem and faced a “complicated situation” in providing a better and improved transport facility to the citizens.

What could be so “uncertain” and “complicated” about establishing a better transport service in the twin cities that it has taken us close to a decade in trying and yet failed to succeed so far?