Drive at your peril

One of the main reasons India’s economic growth has not been higher – a major factor in the recent victory of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – was the earlier government’s neglect of infrastructure. Little surprise then that the infrastructure sector figured prominently in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s recent budget speech, particularly the development of roads, for which over Rs 37,000 crore will be allocated. The previous government built less than 10 kms of roads a day, whereas the NDA plans to increase this to over 30 kms a day.

I am a motoring enthusiast and love driving. Soon after my graduation in the UK, an English friend and I drove overland from London to Cairo, through France, Italy and North Africa. The only mishap we had in two months of driving over a few thousand kilometers was a puncture! The roads, even then, almost half a century ago, were first class and the driving regulations strictly followed.

Not so in India. In 1970, I drove from Bombay (now Mumbai) to the south, through Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, and back again. A few years later, I drove from Bombay to Delhi, a distance of some 1,500 kms, and back. I have also driven many times between Delhi and Kasauli, which is in the Himalayas, and between Bombay and Goa. I consider myself lucky to have survived these trips without a major mishap, since most of the roads were substandard, either too narrow for the heavy traffic they carried, or badly maintained and full of potholes. Admittedly, there has lately been some improvement, but much more needs to be done.

Most foreigners coming to India are appalled at the chaos on Indian roads. Elementary rules are openly flouted by drivers. Then, there are insufficient mobile ambulances to take accident victims to a hospital. Little wonder that India has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of fatal motor accidents of any country in the world.

A sad reminder of this came last month with the death in Delhi of Gopinath Munde, who had just been inducted into Narendra Modi’s cabinet.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 1.4 million serious road accidents take place annually in India and 300 die from them every day. Which means that one Indian dies every three minutes on the roads. That is a staggeringly tragic statistic.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has another telling statistic. In seven of the ten deaths, the families of the deceased are financially crippled since, typically, the person who dies is the main bread-winner. What makes it even worse is that most of these accidents are preventable. In the Munde case, had he been wearing a seat belt, he would almost certainly have survived. In Delhi seat belts are only obligatory for those sitting in the front seats, not in the back. That rule clearly needs to be changed.

No wonder there is a cynical feeling in India that if you are famous and powerful, you can get away, even if you kill or maim somebody on the road. In the USA, on the other hand, the ambition of Edward Kennedy of becoming President of the USA virtually came to an end when he was unable to satisfactorily explain the death of a lady friend in a car accident.

Why does India have such an alarming vehicle accident rate? Basically, due to bad roads, and deplorable traffic management. The number of vehicles on the Indian roads has increased exponentially in the last decade or so, while neither the length nor quality of roads have matched that increase. Even simple measures, which most civilised countries have taken years ago, are yet to be implemented in India, such as cameras at traffic signals to take pictures of those breaking the red light.

There is also the bewildering variety of “vehicles” on Indian roads, not just cars, but trucks, buses, tractors, motor-cycles, scooter rickshaws and cycles as well. In other words, two-wheelers, three-wheelers and four-wheelers. Indian roads carry perhaps the most diverse vehicles in the world, from super-fast cars, to lumbering bullock-carts and horse-driven carriages. In some towns, there are in addition human or cycle-propelled carts that can carry two passengers.

The result is mayhem on Indian roads – and death. The tests for issuing Indian driving licences, which should be extremely rigorous, as they are in Dubai for instance, is a scandal in India, with bribes being commonly given to the traffic authorities to pass a test.

Perhaps the Modi government, having lost one of its shining lights in a car accident, will take corrective steps, not just to improve the highway infrastructure but to also enforce better traffic discipline, thereby making road travel in India less hazardous.

Rahul Singh is the former editor of Reader’s Digest, Indian Express and Khaleej Times