You are not stuck in traffic, you are ‘the traffic’ that you resent so much!

A bus full of people reduces about 50-80 vehicles from roads. A train coach will reduce about 100 vehicles if it reaches where the need is. 

"A developed country is not where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation."

You are not stuck in traffic, you ARE the traffic!’ – Originally a slogan from Copenhagen to promote sustainable means of transport has become a timely reminder for many city planners and administrators in the 21st Century. It is quite self-sympathising and self-deluding to believe that ‘I am stuck in traffic’ – as if there is a larger conspiracy to do so. Smart motorists realise that they are also contributor to the problem of traffic and they cannot get away by putting the blame on others for driving just like them. Recently I have been guilty of adding one more car in the city by buying one. The more I drive the car, the more I realise how I am contributing to the problem.

When you are a car driver, you would like wider roads and less traffic coming your way. Wider roads, free parking and smoother functioning of traffic coupled with lack of efficient public transport compel a lot of people to take up driving. Yet we have a very low car ownership in the country compared to many industrialised countries. For example, the US have about 750 cars per thousand people and we have not even reached about 100 motor vehicles per thousand people. In short, motor vehicles will be growing at unprecedented rates and we will have to learn to deal with this problem like other countries.

Cities around the world are realising that unlimited supply of wider roads and flyovers is not possible. These conventional solutions of keep building ‘roads over roads’ are not economically or environmentally sustainable. By building a maze of flyovers and by allowing relentless traffic, Delhi has attracted the worst air pollution, unsafe roads and never-ending traffic. Besides, who likes to live in a city, which has a jumble of flyovers on every junction but hardly any sight of greens! Even car drivers are not happy with these solutions because they neither get wide roads nor smoothly operated traffic. As new owners add more and more vehicles, the once-upon-a-time nice roads to drive on get congested.

Many cities have realised that they need to make ‘life-style changes’ to solve the problem of their clogged arteries and some by-passes here and they will not help in the long run. As Petro Gustavo - the mayor of Bogota famously said, “A developed country is not where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.” Promoting public transport and making it so efficient and affordable that a majority uses it is a challenge worth taking up.

A bus full of people reduces about 50-80 vehicles from the roads. A metro train coach will reduce about 100 vehicles provided it reaches where the need is. Many vehicle drivers will not mind walking short distances or taking public transport provided there are better facilities. Cities in Gujarat have surely made a good beginning in these directions compared to many other Indian cities but they will need to do much more. Over the last few years, the awareness amongst the citizens about the benefits of public transport is growing. This needs to be now backed up with the adequate investments, long-term plans and efficient implementation. Good governance gives us possibilities of being a solution to the problem and not only the contributors. Hope, we get our due!

(15th June, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

If cities are engines of economic growth, what are the rest of train and coaches?

We need to move beyond romanticising either cities or villages & develop more nuanced understanding about their economic and social roles. In the last two decades, everybody from senior bureaucrats to World Bank officials and academic scholars keep reminding us that cities are the engines of economic growth. They complain that cities have not been given enough attention since independence and we need proper policy and increasing financial support for our cities. To some extent, the slogan ‘cities are engines of economic growth’ is posited against ‘India lives in her villages’. This contributes to a misplaced contest between cities and villages and vice versa.  This is a rather old debate in India. Some political ideologies have demonised cities as sites of criminal activities, greed and pollution. Besides, romanticising village life, which is believed to be closer to our traditions and nature. Both demonising cities or hailing their growth potential presents a one-sided picture. We need to move beyond romanticising either cities or villages and develop more nuanced understanding about economic and social roles of different settlements.  Cities are not islands. Each city becomes a city because of its hinterland, which is rural and agrarian in nature. There is a symbiotic relationship between cities and villages of economic, social and cultural exchanges. It is very difficult to draw a physical boundary around economic production or cultural imports. In fact, cities are quite diverse themselves and so are villages. To say that cities are the engines of economic growth is a misinformed analogy. Would engines have any meaning if they were running without the rest of the train? Would the rest of the train move if there were no engines? We need both the engines and the other bogeys of the train. And one should not claim that I am more important than the other.  In the urbanisation story of India, thousands of small and medium towns play an equally important role as the big metropolis. As per the 2011 census, we have about 50 cities with one million plus population and about 7,900 towns in the range of five thousand to one million populations with great diversity in their geography and economy. Lot of urban growth is taking place in these small and medium towns. According to the latest National Sample Survey, the small and medium towns across the country have witnessed more growth in jobs. Unfortunately, these towns are hardly supported by efficient municipal administration with adequate financial health. In Gujarat, we have about 150 municipalities, which do not receive as much financial support as the big municipal corporations.  Before embarking on the urban policies and programs, we need the right kind of imagination and conception about our cities. An urban discourse or urban policies should not necessarily hamper the focus on rural development and vice versa. Cities are not only engines or industrial production houses or labour markets. As the great urbanist Jane Jacobs would put it - “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” We need cities created by everybody and for everybody. Imagining cities as ‘engines’ is so limiting and boring. (8th June, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

'Make in India' in sync with 'Think in India' will lead to real progress!

Diagram by Jessica Hagy URL: http://thisisindexed.com/2014/09/quiet-pondering-sadly-underrated/

Jessica Hagy has made an interesting diagram showing the relationship between making and thinking. When we spend a lot of effort in making but little effort in thinking then we create the usual ‘stuff’.  When we spend a lot of effort in thinking and relatively little in making then we create ‘art’ objects. Progress of human society requires both – the usual stuff and the art objects. Making and thinking goes hand in hand. We make what we could think about and we should constantly think about what we are making. Balancing between making and thinking takes us to the progress.

The government of India has launched the mission of ‘Make in India’ which has captured the imagination of many. But how are we progressing in the area of ‘Think in India’? Like business houses taking lead in ‘Make in India’, the higher education institutions will have to take lead in ‘Think in India’. Do we have an ‘enabling environment’ in the country to pursue higher education system which promotes critical thinking rather than curtailing it? Do we have enough ‘investments’ in original research and is our young generation ready to take up career paths of being researchers? Do we have any vision of having a world class university or ‘smart’ university system yet?

Traditionally we have believed in ‘Education That Liberates’ (sa vidhyaha ya vimuktaye).  In 1947, many newly established modern institutions vouched to be progressive, liberal and innovative. But unfortunately, there are only few institutions in India which continue these traditions. Most universities spend their time dealing with government regulations and managing to work within their meagre budgets. When are they going to ‘invest’ in critical thinking, original research or innovative pedagogy? For example, most universities in India do not have access to international journals, then how are they going to publish anything in them and get a ranking amongst the top universities in the world? Our students need to be given more choices in their curriculums and they should be allowed choose their own multi-disciplinary pathways. The teachers needs to be more accountable, approachable and rigourous in their approach to teaching. Our universities need to embrace diversities, new ideas and new technologies. Sending an SMS to parents when their adult daughter or son does not attend a class is not the best use of technology and neither is it the right approach to education.

We are in a strange situation now. The government has pulled out of higher education more or less but it still wants to dictate what to teach, whom to admit, whom to hire, what to pay them and how much fees to charge. The big business houses start their own universities (probably to diversify their business) rather than supporting the well-established universities. And then there many individuals which would donate their money to religious charities rather than investing in higher education institutes. Probably, we haven't we realized the need of making good, stable institutions in this country yet.

In short, 'Think in India' will need some attention, some policy support, and some money with more autonomy! We will have to work towards supporting innovative thinking in this country. Otherwise, we will flood the job market with 'stuff' without substance. 

(25th May, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)