One of my colleagues died in a road acccident last week. This is not the first known person i knew died in a road accident. Such incidents make one ponder on the ephemeral nature of life. India has one of the highest rates on road accident related deaths. As a country we have become insensitive to these deaths. We feel sad, ignore and move on to live another day. The state i come from Andhra Pradesh has the dubious distinction of topping the charts in the country. India as a whole i guess is number two in the world rankings.
Who is responsible the citizen or the state ? Yes as citizens we lack basic road driving etiquette in India, we are not considerate to pedsetrians,chidren and the old. Every one is in a hurry to reach their destinations. So the citizen is surely at fault. But does the state have a role ? I think it has an even important role in laying the law and regulating and providing the necessary infrastructure. Every state including the central government have failed miserably in getting their act together with respect to road safety.
Talking about law India has laws for everything so no problems with that, but what about regulation. Polieman standing at street corners and cutting traffic tickets is not regulation. The aspect of road safety needs to be addressed in a wholistic way. 1) Infrastucture (Roads and grade separtors, lane markings, functioning street lights and traffic lights) 2) Licensing regulations 3) Continuous education to drivers 4) Related Infrastructure ( Foot over bridges for perdestrians etc) and enough Manpower to monitor this very important function.
I guess the government knows about the above requirements i discussed above, infact they have experts in traffic engineering so they know better on what needs ot be done. What gets the goose is what are all these Ministers of Roads and Buildings, Bureucrats and Engineers doing about roads and safety of citizens using the roads.
I am sure that when a Roads and buidings minister goes to work every day he must be seeing main roads with out lane markings, potholes, broken road separators, no zebra crossings, dysfunctional traffic lights etc what does he do once he is in office. Does he ignore the plight of the poor citizen or what do these guys do actually?
We citizens we are under the strangle hold of governments inaction and will continue to suffer for all its faliabilities.
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Ram,
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of your points on conditions of roads. It gets so bad that one rainfall of couple of hours is enough to damage good looking roads and cause injury to people.
What I don't agree is that they have experts in infrastructure (or maybe they dont want to show their experties in public projects). As a best example, in Delhi's Dwarka area, they built a underpass but no drain in it. Result... with recent rains, it was as good as a swimming pool and it took 10 days to get water drained from it using pumps etc, causing mayhem among people of region who come to Gurgaon from Delhi. Then they have a flyover which has turns at 75-degree with no divider and lights or flourecent signs to help people at night that there is sharp turn agead. It has taken lives of several people in last 1 year. They are talking of hosting Commonwealth games in Delhi wiht this kinda infrastructure...maybe they are dreaming on glory of 82'Ashiads...
I feel it needs a concerted effort from authorities.
Regards,
Amandeep