About Road Rage

An incident that took place this week, in my home town Pune, raises serious concerns about safety of commuters on road. A 26-year-old engineer working with a private company, was stabbed and his car driver assaulted by three unidentified persons, including a six-seater “For Hire” vehicle driver, on an outer road in Pune. The incident happened, when this engineer's car was parked near a roadside ramshackle cabin shop by the driver to buy some tobacco. The time was about 11 PM and a 6 seater “For Hire” vehicle, perhaps never saw the car in the darkness, and rammed into it before turning turtle. There were heated arguments as the “For hire” vehicle owner and the 3 passengers demanded money from this engineer for damages caused. The engineer refused to pay and just left. About 200 meters ahead, the “For Hire” vehicle managed to stop engineer's car. He and his co-passengers, pulled the engineer out from the car and stabbed him. He fell down, bleeding heavily. His car driver, instead of helping him. Just ran away terribly scared. Meanwhile, two persons who were passing by, saw this guy lying injured and took him on their motorcycle to a nearby Hospital. However, they robbed him of his two cellphones and cash of Rs500 before dumping him outside the hospital.

I am not trying to analyze here the case; or who was the actual defaulter or anything of the sort, that is for the police investigators. My concern here is about the basic general tendency seen these days, to express any feeling of anger, in form of physical violence, on roads. This tendency along with extreme arrogance and disrespect for law, are making the roads in my home town, a dangerous place.

Few months back, I was trying to cross a busy one way street. As there are no pedestrian crossings provided anywhere, one needs to cross the road, when signal lights at a far off place turn red. While crossing the road, I was naturally looking at the far off signal, from where the traffic would start flowing in few seconds again. A person riding a motor cycle, suddenly came up to me from other side and jammed his brakes. I felt really very startled and humbly pointed to him that this was a one way street. He told me that he knows that, but the rules are not meant for him. He was so arrogant and so sure that police wouldn’t touch him that I thought it to be prudent to keep quiet and just continued crossing the road. I am quite sure that had I gone in an argument with him, he could have easily converted this argument in some form of physical violence easily.

The problem is that now almost every vehicle driver in Pune has purposefully given up his or her traffic or civic sense. There is a law of jungle here. Once on road, people drive with their animal instincts of survival and have stopped bothering about niceties and orderly behaviours. This fundamental change now often leads to road rage.

An incident happened recently, when an elderly man was trying to cross a side lane joining a busy thoroughfare. When he was patiently waiting on a curbside, a motor cycle rider sharply turned into the lane, speaking on his mobile, which was held up near his ear by pressing his head on one side on his shoulder. While turning, he suddenly spread left hand, making an animated gesture while talking he never noticed this elderly man standing on curbside. His outward spread hand hit the elderly man all of a sudden and made him loose his balance, he fell down hitting a tree trunk and broke rib bone and had to suffer a long illness in the bed. The motor cycle driver never even bothered to look back or take care of the old man and just speeded away. Poor elderly man had to suffer a long illness for no fault of his.

Driving a four-wheeler has become a nightmare in Pune as people do not seem to have patience while commuting. People do not follow lane discipline which often leads to minor accidents, sometimes turning into big fights. New induction of SUV's on the roads has created further congestion on the narrow roads. Even traffic police have become helpless bystanders, who mostly spend their time instead of controlling traffic, collecting fines from an odd fellow, who has broken the law.

In Pune, usually nice and polite people, turn into wild animals, once they start driving on road and if they meet any obstruction or are resisted, they become angry wild animals with a road rage that could even kill.

26 December 2012

A clogged urban future

A friend mentioned to me yesterday, an interesting calculation about traffic congestion on roads in my hometown, Pune in India. This calculation is made by an engineer, who works in the roads department of the Municipal corporation. According to this calculation, if all the four wheeled vehicles plying on city roads are made to stand in a straight line, touching bumper to bumper, the total length works out as double the length of all city roads taken together. Such is the congestion of vehicles in the Pune city. It is a common experience here, that if vehicular traffic moving smoothly on any busy road is interrupted even for few seconds, for reasons such as a vehicle pulling up from parking slot or a vehicle taking a U turn, vehicles start piling up on both sides almost instantly. If this interruption continues for more than a half or a full minute, we have regular traffic jam, which may last for any length of time. Unfortunately, this clogging of traffic, is not the only clogging we face here. We have water clogging the roads, whenever there are few spells or sharp showers of rain. We have clogging of garbage all the time, with garbage cans overflowing and removal mechanisms unable to cope up with piling garbage.

I recently came across a report describing the precarious situations faced by the residents in some of the Asian cities. This report in a way removed one disbelief nurtured by me in my mind, that my hometown holds the distinction of being filthiest or with most congested roads. This however is no solace to me, that most of the urban centers in Asia are suffering the same fate as my hometown.

Talking about cities in India first, Mumbai with more than a 12 Million inhabitants has a population density of 20,000 inhabitants per square KM, which makes it one of the world's most densely populated cities. Its packed suburban trains carry more that 7 million people every day. Every year more than 3000 commuters are killed while travelling, sometimes falling from open doors or hit while crossing the tracks. During rush hours, trains are so crowded that it is difficult to breathe even. Mumbai offers the best economic opportunities for the migrant labour, who keep arriving in large numbers every day to Mumbai and since housing is almost impossible to get in Mumbai, they often build shanties on river banks (such as river 'Mithi'), storm drains and even foot paths. Since they can not avail of any civil services, they just dump garbage anywhere they find some space. This clogs the storm drains and impedes the flow of storm rainwater.

Toady, out of India's 1.2-billion population, only 30 percent live in cities, far lower than the 50.6 percent in China or the 70-80 percent in developed countries. Just imagine, what would happen to Mumbai, if 50 % of Indian population migrates to cities. Even at present, with an astronomical rise in the population, pollution and the micro weather of the cities are becoming quite intolerable. This fact and the high living standards of country's burgeoning middle class in the cities, have created great demand for air conditioners, microwave ovens, washing machines and other electrical items. This has no wonder, created a great strain on the power requirements. We have seen how this strain can affect a city in last week's power outage all over north India.

Considering the Asian cities outside India, Dhaka city has already become a moribund city and is facing the worst transport infrastructure problems in its history. In January 2009, the government promised to tackle the crisis with an array of ambitious rail, bus and road projects, but most are still on paper. Intelligentsia in Bangladesh feel that it is dying fast and there is no hope that it can be saved. However, traffic jams are by no means unique to Dhaka. In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, experts predict that with its aging bus network and lack of a suburban train system, the capital will reach total gridlock by 2014. A global commuter satisfaction survey carried out in 2011 ranks Jakarta in the bottom position.

Bangkok and Manila have been hit by the most devastating floods in decades over past year. Yet, on the outskirts of Manila, vital forested areas have been destroyed to make way for housing developments catering to growing middle and upper classes and within the city squatters have been building shanties at their own will. This rapid urbanization without proper planning is blocking the natural waterways . This and the neglected drainage systems, are the two major factors behind the deadly floods that have battered the Philippine capital Manila in recent times. Thailand capital Bangkok has been actually built on swampland. But as building boom shows no sign of abating with apartment towers mushrooming around the city, the city is slowly sinking and risks being below sea level in half a century from now. Bangkok also depends heavily on ground water to meet the growing needs of its factories and 12 million inhabitants. Aggressive groundwater extraction is taking a heavy toll as groundwater levels are dropping lower and lower.

According to experts, the principal reasons for this disastrous situation faced by urban conglomerates in Asia are not difficult to find. Poor strategic planning, paltry investment in infrastructure and a lack of political will, have made these overcrowded cities highly vulnerable to the pressures from ever increasing population density, shortage of water and climate change. McKinsey Global Institute research centre reports that India alone needs 350-400 KM (around 250 miles) of new metros and subways a year and 19,000-25,000 KM of roads. If we talk of Asia as a whole, these figures would rise to astronomical levels.

The living conditions in the cities of Asia have deteriorated to such an extent that even with ever increasing prosperity, the inhabitants are still forced to dwell their lives in the same squalid conditions faced by them, when they were not so well off.

Is their a solution? At least in India, my answer is negative. With the democratic set up, there is almost no chance of any political leadership taking up unpleasant corrective steps. All major cities in India appear to be doomed. How long would they survive, one may never know. But the process might have already began.

14 August 2012

On Air Travel

Last week, I had a chance to make a journey by air to New Delhi on a domestic flight. It has been years since I had traveled by air on a domestic flight within India. In fact my last trip to New Delhi was at least 30 years back. It was natural for me to wonder at the change that has taken place in aviation sector in India. We were supposed to take off from Pune airport around 11.30 AM. I had in my mind the old airport of Pune, when I reached there. In old days this airport was very small with only a flight or two landing there. That too was the old DC3 or Dakota aircraft belonging to the Government airline as there were no private airlines in those days. The Pune airport of today was a real shocker.I could not believe that there were at least seven or eight hundred people on the airport, waiting to go some where. When I reached the departure hall, I saw at least 4 or 5 big jet aircraft waiting on the tarmac. Out of these, three aircraft belonging to different airlines, were supposed to leave for new Delhi only, one after the other. All this was beyond my wildest imagination. I checked the departures board. There were 11 flights leaving for Delhi every day, which meant that at least 2000 to 2500 passengers traveled to New Delhi from Pune each day by air. Looking at the crowd, who were waiting for my flight, the fact could be confirmed.

For us,lips of wisdom, the real precious jewels

When we entered our school building in Pune, from the main door, the first room was a circular lobby. In this lobby, right in front of the main door, bass relief statues of our school founders, fixed in the wall, would be seen. On the left of these bass reliefs, there used to be a big notice board. I also remember few sign boards hung on the wall, somewhere in this arrangements. These nicely polished wooden sign boards, used to have in engraved letters, writings and sayings of the famous saints and poets of Maharashtra. I do not clearly remember now, what were these sayings? However I do recollect one sign board which said that "Talk without corresponding action, is worthless." Unfortunately, no one ever paid any attention to any of these sign boards, even though we used to see them at least couple of times each day. I never felt that there was anything of substance to be learned from these sayings.

However, I keep on remembering this particular sign board, these days very often. During course of last year (2011), Punaites or citizens of city of Pune, had only one subject in their mind. Subjects such as presence of garbage heaps on the streets, water supply irregularities, crowded streets, squalor and dirt, were all forgotten. All the so called local leaders, were trying to join the din and noise by expressing their opinions on this subject rather vehemently. There were citizens forums discussing the topic. The common subject of all this heated discussions,  was the Metro train for Pune. There were questions and questions. Should we have the metro? Should it be elevated or underground? Where should  the stations be located? etc. etc. Finally, ordinary Puneite even hoped that the Metro train may actually run in Pune one day and would provide some relief to the harassed commuter. After a considerable debate, local Municipal corporation approved the plan. However, more than an year has passed since then. It now appears that bureaucracy has probably swallowed up the project file as there is no talk, no action by anyone on the subject. If we now ask a Puneite about the Metro, he is surely going to react with a counter question, What Metro?.

Quality of Life

For last couple of years, power outages have become a big problem in India. Last summer, we had a severe power shortage situation in Pune. Things became so bad, that every day,  power was switched off  by the electricity provider for as long as  four or even six hours. Work, leisure, almost every thing, had to be rescheduled.  Rich, poor, everybody suffered equally.  Life became absolutely unbearable during those summer months with Sunlight baking us in our houses and no fans to cool us.  Luckily for me, I could  leave  Pune at that time, for a long sojourn in U.S.A.  After I had reached my destination, my sense of relief was almost beyond expression. I had never  felt so much distressed before,  in any of my previous visits to this country, by  the difference in the quality of life in the western world and India.