big cars, bigger egos and culture of rule-breaking kills people on the roads!

We are curiously watching the case of Salman Khan’s drunken driving and roadside killing. As of now, Salman Khan, balancing between public sympathy and hatred, is delaying the process of justice with a hope that he might evade it completely. As a reputed judge and author Tom Bingham said, the rule of law unfortunately is ‘hooray for my side’ for most of the people. This partisanship is often used to put pressure on the judiciary. Besides the larger issue of the prevalence of the rule of law, Salman Khan is surely a bad role model for the young motor vehicle drivers. 

Salman Khan is not the only bad role model in young people’s life. Youngsters learn most of their behaviour traits from their parents. How about parents (on motorbikes and cars) dropping kids to school by driving on the wrong side of the road? Lot of people believe that we should teach the kids traffic discipline from their childhood - catch them young! Kids learn more looking at the conduct of their parents then what they learn in the children's traffic parks. How do we expect the kids to follow traffic rules when there is a prevailing culture of casual rule breaking for the sake of little convenience? Unfortunately, this culture of casual rule breaking is considered social smartness in most cases and is further encouraged.

  

The wrongful behaviour on part of the motor vehicle drivers also emerge from their imagination of seeing themselves as 'victims' - 'what do I do when there is no provision for me!' or ‘give me more space, I am more important than others!’ When someone buys an expensive, big vehicle the feeling of victimhood doubles up - as if buying an expensive vehicle is a license to ask for more road space, free parking space and honking unnecessarily. More powerful people with their more powerful vehicles have a great sense of entitlement. When this self-assumed entitlement for unlimited road space is denied, they see themselves as victim of relentless traffic and not as equal participants in adding to the chaos. The combination of the culture of casual rule breaking and notion of ‘victimhood’ results in road rage and wrongful traffic behaviour. 

  

The statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau shows us that the bigger vehicles are responsible for larger number of road fatalities. Trucks or SUVs going at a high speed will kill more people than an auto rickshaw. With bigger vehicle comes bigger responsibility of saving other people’s life. 1.25 lakh Indians die in road traffic related crashes every year. If we are serious about reducing the road fatalities then we will not only have to make the physical infrastructure of our streets safer but also target some of these social issues - bad role models, sense of entitlement/victimhood amongst the privileged drivers and the culture of casual rule breaking. 

(11th May, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

Technologies don’t make cities smart; accountable govts, clean streets do

After waiting for a year, Union Cabinet finally approves two urban programs - Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (aka AMRUT) for 500 cities and Smart Cities Mission for 100 cities. There will central allocation of about one lakh crores rupees in next five years. On prima facie, it seems that AMRUT is the second phase of the good ol' JnNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission), which has partly financed the bus rapid transit, flyovers, water-sanitation, waste management projects in Ahmedabad and in other cities. 

AMRUT is a continuation of the past policies but the ‘Smart Cities’ has captured the imagination of many people. It is a powerful political slogan and like all political slogans, 'Smart cities' make big promises without really telling you what they are. And debates are raging in the country about what are 'Smart cities'. Some news items claim that smart cities are all about information technology, automations, remote-controls, sensors, CCTV cameras, access controls and what not. But what if these so-called smart cities end up being private townships like colonial times when there were beautiful enclaves for the Whites and dusty-dirty towns for the rest of us. Is this the new smart cities mission going to subsidize and promote these ‘white enclaves’? Lets hope not. 

Keeping our anxieties and excitement aside, let us understand what makes a person smart? Often we are misguided by the appearances but the real smartness is in using optimum resources, being fair and balanced, finding negotiated solutions, being progressive, being responsible for your actions, and being open to feedbacks. Smartness cannot be imposed as it comes from within. Smartness prospers when there is good education, health and good exposure to the world. Smartness prospers when there are ideas in abundance and choices in everything. 

If we go by this definition of smartness then what kind of cities are we aspiring to - surely, the cities with accountable governments, as they will love the feedbacks from the citizens. The smart city government will consult the citizens before spending their money. The technology in smart cities will be used to optimize resources and not for the surveillance the citizens or for useless automations. So what is a smart city - If there is a shelter over every head, clean water and toilet in every house, clean streets and ample number of buses on every road; the city with government that listens to people, which will have political and financial autonomy to run the city - that is a smart city.

A smart phone in hand doesn’t make a person smart. The smart of use of the smart features might make someone smart. A promise of technology is not a promise of smartness. While discussing smart cities, let us not confuse the ends and the means. Technologies are important means but the ends will have to be cities that take care of us, inspire us and encourage us to take a stroll and to roll on two non-polluting pedals!

(4th May, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

There is enough civic sense; mechanisms need to be in place to harness it

Babus and Netas often complain that our citizens do not have any 'civic sense' and that we have created the infrastructure but people do not take care of it. This is a half-truth. We often do not have governing mechanisms in place to take care of our urban infrastructure on everyday basis. 

Lets take an example of littering on the streets and the ‘Clean India Campaign’ or ‘Swachchh Bharat Abhiyaan’ of the Government of India. During the launch of the campaign we were reminded of our crucial role and a lot of people picked up a broom to ‘Clean India’. What is missing now? When a citizen, inspired by the high morale of the ‘Clean India campaign’, looks for a dustbin to throw garbage, it is the job of the city government to make sure that the dustbin is in its place. When a dustbin is in place, it is more effective to tell the citizen to use it. Citizens can exercise their ‘civic sense’ of not littering only when the government is doing its job of putting the dustbins in place. Here, the 'dustbin' is just a symbol of the solid waste management and public sanitation system of the city. 

One of the objectives of the Clean India campaign is 100% collection and scientific disposal and recycling of municipal solid waste.  In most of our cities, the solid waste management and public sanitation is in shambles, especially in the public spaces. In many less-privileged parts of Ahmedabad streets are not cleaned regularly. In the more-privileged parts where they are cleaned regularly, the garbage is burnt openly. Open burning of street waste is practiced widely in Ahmedabad – sometimes right in front of the municipal officials’ residences. Open burning of waste generates toxic fumes that are harmful for human bodies. Generally the waste is burnt in the morning hours, which coupled with the emissions from the morning peak hours of traffic creates deadly air that all the commuters breath while going to work. 

It has been six months since the ‘Clean India campaign’ was launched but we have not seen many changes on the ground level. The campaign also rightfully stresses on public sanitation and building of toilets in every house in the country. How is our municipal corporation going to ensure that toilets will be built in every house whether they are in slums or elsewhere? Public toilets are generally not built (especially for women) and when built, they are not maintained properly. As citizens, we understand that it is a mammoth task to clean our cities. But did this campaign inspire or shake up our governing agencies to change their ways and becoming serious about cleaning our cities? 

There are two important duties of being a citizen in a democracy. We are often made guilty of the first one of not exercising ‘civic sense’. But we completely overlook the other one – making the democratic government accountable. It is time we start making our (local) government accountable for ‘Clean India’ before we get gyan on improving our civic sense.

( 27th April, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)