Delhi reels under ‘poor to severe’ air quality, while villages merely 50 km away still breathe fresh air. It is useful, therefore, to ask the question about differences in population and city size (between, say, a large village with 50,000 population, and a medium size city with population of 1 million, let alone a mega-city like Delhi) in this battle to control air pollution.
Urban dwellers need mobility within a city. Children need to get to school, and to attend tuition classes. Young people need to attend college. Working people need to get to work from home, and back. If mobility needs related to health and recreation are added to the above essentials, city-dwellers need to be mobile all the time, several times a day, every day. If the central tenet of city-dwelling is requirement for mobility, then forms of affordable, efficient and safe transportation available to different classes of city-dwellers makes a major difference to their well-being. Larger the city, more number of transportation options need to be made available to increase mobility.
As cities have grown, largely in an unplanned manner, over the past five decades, average distance for commuting to work has increased, because housing stocks are concentrated in certain pockets, and workplaces in certain others. This situation is deeply confounded for Delhites because they have to encounter Lutyen’s Delhi in the centre of the city (called New Delhi Municipal Council). Since the political and official elites, including judges and military top brass, occupy this centre in large bungalows, rest of Delhi has to commute even longer distances to get to their place of work. Many children travel far from their immediate neighbourhood to attend school, because we do not have a national policy that ensures that all kids, irrespective of class, attend only neighbourhood schools.
For most of us, mobility means using some form of transportation. The only folks who walk to and from work are some of us who maintain an office at home (doctors, advocates, accountants, etc) or have ‘occupied’ some public space as an informal settlement. These generally house all those whom the middle and elite classes depend on our maids, security guards, drivers, rickshaw-pullers, vendors, construction workers, etc. Cycling, the mode I used growing up in small town India, is a major health risk in large Indian cities at present.
I live in Delhi now, so let us consider other somewhat motorable forms of transportation available in this city. My neighbourhood has seen a sudden rise of e-rickshaws, despite no approval by the High Court. These take 8-10 passengers for distances of 1-2 km, mostly driven by 14-year-old boys who have recently run away from their homes in nearby villages.
An advanced version, historically very popular in Delhi, are auto-rickshaws. Over the past 40 years of my attempted mobility in this city, I have never -- NEVER -- succeeded in getting one of them to agree to take me where I wanted to go by metre rates. Rush hour, rainy days and nights are a ‘nightmare’ in dealing with auto-rickshaws in Delhi. They park everywhere, stop anywhere, the drivers wear what they want (and not the mandated uniform) and speak in whatever manner they please. Despite several hundred ‘helplines’ and campaigns to improve auto-rickshaw services, nothing much has changed, and I continue to avoid them as far as possible. The new government in Delhi is ‘their friend’, so the indiscipline and lawlessness among them has only increased.
I cannot afford taxis for the daily mobility requirements of me and my family.
Now, let me try mass public transport. Buses -- red, green and orange, ordinary and air-conditioned -- do not go directly between my home and workplace; changing buses makes the journey long and tiresome. These buses stop anywhere they like, turn wherever convenient and change lanes at will, without concern for other traffic -- pedestrian or motored. Needless to say, the crowds in the bus, and frequent scuffles at bus-stands, are hazardous. And, nearly 75% of all girls and women in Delhi -- including those in my family -- have been pinched, physically and orally sexually harassed at least a few times in a Delhi bus.
And why -- just why? -- should there be a ‘Gramin Sewa’(rural service) in Delhi metropolitan area? These tempo-taxis are not for the faint of heart. They carry 12-15 passengers (instead of the allowed 6), driven at higher speeds than the machines are designed to handle by risk-taking, aggressive, unlicensed drivers.
What about the famous shining Metro! It is so overcrowded and passengers so intrusive that being pushed and shoved is part of daily experience. But worse awaits you when you alight. There is no last mile connectivity to take you to your final destination. Despite much fanfare, single ticket for metro and bus has not been introduced. There is inadequate and unsafe parking outside most Metro stations.
Now, I am left to go to work in my own car. Over the past decade, my journey time has tripled; my average speed is 15 km/hour as it takes me 45 minutes to cover a distance of 9 km. This has happened largely because movement of traffic has become chaotic and undisciplined. Carriage ways are narrow because of illegal parking of various public vehicles -- auto-rickshaws, e-rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, Gramin Sewa, taxis, buses, trucks, tempos, water tankers and even private cars. They have taken over public spaces meant as roads and footpaths. This private gain from public commons is being ‘allowed’ because most public vehicles are owned and controlled by current and former councillors, MLAs, MPs and their kith and kin. So, even though not really affordable and not completely hassle-free, I find my mobility is more efficient, convenient and safe in my own vehicle.
Now the Delhi government, in order to combat air pollution, is going to restrict ONLY private vehicles on alternate days according to my license plate number -- the ‘ode’ scheme. This scheme ignores the causes and sources of air pollution smoke belching public and commercial vehicles, illegal factories, massive solid waste on the roads, burning of bio-wastes, out-dated thermal power plants and diesel generators. The much-touted drive of the Delhi government to remove all rubbish by November 30 has been ‘rubbished’; waste on the ground remains. Silly comparisons with Beijing have been made. Let us talk China if you have tried to fix all of the above, before coming to the ‘ode’ solution. Media reports that 76% of women feel unsafe in Delhi today. This does not happen in China; harassers are punished severely. Corruption cases result in quick punishment, many a times by hanging, in China.
The odds are against affordable, efficient and safe mobility in Delhi, though those for success of the ‘ode’ scheme are being enhanced by closing down all educational institutions in the first fortnight of January. As 20,000 more buses have been promised, we can expect even more lawlessness and chaos on the roads. To give us clean air, the Delhi government may as well shut down the city for two weeks, so that there is no mobility required.
Why is my choice down to immobility, or clean air?
This blog post was first published on DNAIndia.com (http://www.dnaindia.com/authors/rajesh-tandon)
