As was to be expected, several attempts are reportedly being made to tamper with the evidence in the investigation of the crash caused by the car of the son of Maharashtra state BJP chief in Nagpur on September 10.
Basic norms are obviously violated, the car was towed away from the site of the crash to a garage without a proper panchanama, recording of evidence, there were usual delays in the recording of blood samples of drunken youths, the name of the BJP leader’s son was omitted initially from the record, he is the owner of the expensive Audi car and so on. The driver fled the scene of the crash, was chased and arrested, was found to be drunk. Also, the crash is a result partly of the anti people transport policy pursued by the government over decades.
Sanket,son of state BJP president Chandhrashekhar Bawankule, was in the car driven by his friend after all occupants had had drinks at a local pub. It shows a rising culture of arrogant rich driving and causing harm to others without any indication of guilt, else we would not have seen such continued rise in such behaviour.
But it is basically a result of the promotion of the private car ownership even as the government humiliates common people with its its denial of public transport to the masses.
We have a glut of motor cars, a problem of over production, and shrinking availability of buses , this amounts to a serious assault on the poor, first it robs the poor of mobility, it also renders them victims of the assault of the rich.
And because car sales are not picking up, the government acting in league with the automobile lobby, as some would put it, spends huge amount of public funds on creating car parking spaces, robbing ordinary people of public space
It is also an irony that Nagpur is the city from which hail Nitin Gadkari, union road transport minister, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadanavis, also heads of the state BJP and state Congress and this is also a city with a notoriously poor service of public transport. The new Metro rail has done little to reduce road congestion. Ridership is poor despite bringing down the fare to Rs five, lower than even in buses, shows utterly bad urban planning . Funds are poured on the expensive Metro system and are denied to buses.
And worse, the leadership takes pride in claiming that by 2028 India will account for sale of more cars than any other country. This is a real shame . Public transport is not at all on the agenda of the rulers , they do make claims but these are so nakedly false.
Mr Nitin Gadkari, union road transport minister, proudly declared earlier this week that India has surpassed Japan as a big market for cars. We have overtaken Japan and are third in the world after the U.S. and China.
He made the assertion at the 15th international conference on injury prevention and safety at Taj Palace hotel in New Delhi.
He should have been more sad than proud because we are shamefully lagging way behind when it comes to needs of ordinary people, that is in the manufacture of buses and also in the extremely low availability of buses for common people as reflected in the current transport crisis in Mumbai. Ask the lady domestic help in your houses, how difficult it is for her to commute. And it is bad for other bus users as well.
Shamefully, we are also on top in the world in the number of people killed on roads every year.
Sadly, many of the solutions Mr Gadkari suggested were not in keeping with conventional wisdom.
Cars are the main killers of children and others on the road but he and others too completely divert the issue by asking that children be given road safety education, it is like training people on how to escape from a murderer while taking few steps to check murderous behaviour, often seen in many motorists.
Similarly, his suggestion that overbridges should be built outside schools is extremely expensive, penalises the victim and is utterly unworkable and contrary to expert views. We will have to build lakhs of such bridges. It would be so much easier to tame motorists, reduce their speed but that is precisely the government does not want to do, it wants to please motorists, the car manufacturer lobby, let children, people suffer.
Real criminals, if one can use the word, are the irresponsible road engineers, this is well proven, not an exaggeration. Mr Gadkari said the fault is embedded in the road design itself , DPR , detailed project reports are themselves faulty. Yet, the engineers show such contempt for pedestrians and others.
The police and RTO regional transport offices are very good in diverting attention of people from the main issues, true, helmets should be used but there are many other causes of crashes which the government machinery ignores..
But they are also criminally responsible for wrongful use of traffic signals which are highly discriminatory against common people, they are harassed by increasing their waiting time while giving priority to car users, not to speak of VIP traffic.
Listening to Prof Mahmood Mamdani , political theorist from Columbia university, in Mumbai recently one realised once again the extent of the large number of people killed by Israel in Gaza since October last. But since I also regularly follow the number of road vehicle crash deaths in India, I found that these deaths in India at over 153,000 in a year are far higher.
Yet, we largely remain unmoved by the deaths in India. And the Indian government is largely responsible for these deaths, it is the international norms, the government have a responsibility to check, reduce, eliminate road deaths. But in India the deaths are climbing each year.
Even Nitin Gadkari, union road transport minister, admitted last week that the road crash deaths in india were higher than people killed in wars with China, Pakistan,communal riots, law and order problems and so on. That apart, the Indian State is responsible for this in multiple ways. Look at the traffic police and their attitude to pedestrians, they are totally indifferent if not positively hostile. One would expect some safeguard for pedestrians near one of the most notorious accident spots in India, near A 1 bakery in Bandra where alleged rash driving by Salman Khan caused a death and a number of injuries. That made big news for years without any increase in road safety measures.
I closely monitored the traffic signal at this spot in the last two days, two days because I wanted to make it doubly sure. And noticed that the signal never turns green for pedestrians and this is a busy traffic junction, not far from the Worli Bandra sea link.
So, the police are treating pedestrians almost as sacrificial beings No exaggeration here. This is also the pattern elsewhere. Often the time given to pedestrians is as little as five seconds. Often none at all.
Huge funds ARE available for crash prevention but these are not used properly. Even meetings with citizens are not being held though these are mandatory under the new road safety legislation in India.
The district collectors are mandated to create road safety committees, we have not even heard of this in Mumbai and suburban Mumbai districts. This is gross neglect by any standards. Such meetings would cost little money and be useful but even this is not being done.
The committee does function in Pune district, Parisar environment group in the city, does organise educational programmes in this connection. It organised a workshop in Mumbai recently with some public transport activists. The malaise lies at the top, the system is totally indifferent towards common people
This morning I saw an elderly man clearing dog shit with a stick in hand on a footpath on Domnic street in Bandra. It is a nice footpath with a wonderful view of the very green grass on St Andrew school ground. Pedestrians are often unfairly blamed for walking on the street, but often they are forced to. Often the footpaths are non existent or dirty.
Sandeep Gaikwad of Parisar made a presentation at the Mumbai workshop on enforcing speed limits and helmet use. Many politicians brought pressure on the police to be lenient for those not using helmets. It was also pointed out that while speed was a major killer, rash driving on narrow roads even with less speed caused deaths, injuries.
Obsevers said the police while being very active in seeking helmet use ignored so many other safety violations. They seemed to be so cosy with motorists and indifferent towards pedestrians.
Almost all participants were critical of the casual manner in which driving licences were issued. Ashok Datar said officers involved in giving licences to bad drivers should be penalised.
Debi Goenka, environmentalist, said vehicle defects were also responsible for mishaps, truck drivers , trapped in extreme heat, should be given air conditioned cabins, this can be done at a nominal cost.
Ganesh Matkari, film critic and novelist, said cars like Audi and Porsche, are now an objects of terror on the road, people are afraid of walking in the evening or night.
Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of a book on public transport
