Jawed Naqvi
IT is deemed normal to have a mismatch between different countries about what their national priorities are at any given moment. Around the time religious zealots were ingesting divine glory from the swirling dust of a hitherto nondescript mosque they demolished in Ayodhya in December 1992, British MPs were debating reduction in the age of consent to homosexual relationships.
Similar mismatch of objectives within national confines usually runs along class contours. The poor in India need jobs and food, the wealthy hunger for higher tax rebates and wider roads to drive their foreign made but often locally labelled cars. A typical politician, ensconced as a buffer between the jostling sides, takes money from one and votes from the other to protect them from each other, but his cynicism has an expiry date after which most, though not all, of his ilk all are compelled to drop their masks and take sides in the bloody duel. Even as the subterfuge is exposed a two-party system has stabilised, meanwhile, to take care of the potential turbulence. As both parties take turns to ditch the poor there is very little the poor can do except to curse their luck and the assorted politicians.
There is now also an emerging class of Indians who regard the daily jostling around them like a bad TV serial that can be switched off with the flick of a button. In the middle of this jostling (and chosen aloofness) a young lady from Chennai shared with me the sad news last week of how her fun-loving husband landed himself in the hospital with a car accident that charred his face and left him badly bruised. He was trying out his new Ferrari, it seems, on the crowded city roads.What a coincidence that I have known her father, a retired diplomat, for his bristling sense of humour. One day as we drove out in his old Ambassador car from New Delhi’s British-built South Block, which houses the foreign ministry, we were overtaken by a three-wheeler scooter taxi. The rush of energy took its toll. The scooter spluttered and stalled in front of us with possible engine failure forcing the Ambassador’s driver too to apply emergency brakes. “Another example of a good Indian reckless at slow speed,” came the diplomat’s withering comment as we manoeuvred past the poorly trained cabbie.
If you have been following the brouhaha over Delhi’s BRT (Bus Rapid Transport) you would do well to see it as a microcosm of India’s mismatched priorities exacerbated in no small way by a proclivity for religious idiosyncrasies that pass for our collective culture. Every road in Delhi is packed with cars. But that is not the only reason for the dead slow grind to work for its millions of commuters. Former president Abdul Kalam had to walk to a function recently after his car was caught in a traffic jam apparently caused by stray cattle squatting on the road. Many Indians worship cows and so the Delhi municipality, sensitive to the religious issues, allows them to roam freely on busy roads. Another cause for traffic jams are the ubiquitous “ancient temples” that have sprung up from nowhere to block large stretches of public roads.
To balance the mandatory obscurantist element in urban planning, graves of little known Muslim saints are then allowed to angularly jut out on public walkways. However, it is none of these factors that makes for newspaper headlines. But a parallel road to the one that forced Mr Kalam to walk a 12-kms stretch that is being tried out to facilitate large-sized buses to get priority space has become a thorn in the flesh for the car lobby. The problem is not complex. People need mass transport systems. The Delhi Metro built with Japanese assistance has already made life considerably easier for thousands of daily commuters. High capacity buses are said to be even better suited for mass transit purposes in Delhi. The car lobbyists object. Says Prof Dinesh Mohan whose expertise has led the government to try out the BRT: “The Indian upper middle class looks upon the USA as a model of the good life. No wonder all our cities have tried to introduce hard zoning policies, and encouraged construction of wide roads and other facilities for a car based life. Luckily, not all plan provisions have materialised and our cities have grown more organically, partly due to the forces of electoral democracy.”
In terms of the location of the lower class working people cities like Delhi have grown more organically in which the poor have created their own spaces often in the heart of the metropolis. “The demands of the poor are often offset by the middle and upper classes wanting to live away from the poor and form gated communities at the periphery of the city. These developments set up a parallel but more powerful political demand, aided and abetted by contractors and consultants to provide infrastructure,” says Prof Mohan. He has been subjected to ridicule and adverse editorial comments for holding that view. Why? The BRT requires motorists to share the road equally with the buses. If the project succeeds, the way it has in several global cities, it could become easier to commute with cheaper mass transit transport much to the chagrin of the car lobbies. According to Prof Mohan, wherever the lower income groups are able to get themselves heard we are more likely to have more sustainable cities as they will need facilities for walking, bicycling and public transport closer to place of work and shopping and leisure activities around their homes.
“This will influence what sustainable cities will look like in the future. The upper classes are unlikely to do it willingly.” BRT serves the purpose of being a low cost, at grade, medium capacity public transport system that can be built quickly and in stages. But the newspapers for obvious reasons would hear none of that.
The entire debate, however, looks meaningless, if also callous, if we consider the moral costs, not to speak of the prohibitive price tag involved in joining the energy wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan every time we turn on the car engine. It is not easy for most people to divine the link but every time you see a traffic jam and there’s never a day when you don’t have several of them in Delhi with car engines revving you become a key part of the daily suicide bombing triggered by the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s not very different from the way some people profit from the illegal diamond trade in Sierra Leone.
Interestingly many Americans, whose notorious appetite for inexpensive petrol has suffered a serious setback with the prices approaching $4 a gallon, are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.
People are stealing petrol from other peoples’ cars. There have been reports of people driving away from petrol pumps without paying.
The New York Times reported last week that mass transit use was up eight per cent in Denver alone in the first three months of the year compared with last year, despite a fare increase in January and a slowing economy. “Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.”
Cities with established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in their use by five per cent or more so far this year. “But the biggest surges of 10 to 15 per cent or more over last year are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.” Here you are. The very people whose greed for cheap oil is at the root of so much misery in the world appear to be becoming reasonable. But, as the calumnious debate in India shows, this wisdom is not likely to dawn here any time soon. There is clearly a mismatch in the priorities of a people who have come to realise the forbidding costs of their profligacy and newcomers in the fray who are still prone to being reckless at slow speed.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com