I have seen and lived in several cities over the 20 years of my life. And even now I travel. But since I live in Bangalore and mostly use the roads of this city I am going to ask my questions to my fellow Bangalore-road-users.
I dont exactly have questions to ask but I just wonder... I have been in Bangalore since 2002. The traffic here, all will agree, has been increasing by the minute. I have seen Bangalore in its earlier days as well, when I was a child and would come here only to watch cable TV in my Grandparents house, eat roasted corn in Lalbagh, visit the very hip and popular MG Road (I'm talking about those days when Urvashi used to play English movies) and wait for a goodbye gift from my uncle which almost always turned out to be a Barbie. When I started college in Bangalore it never surprised me when I noticed only few in my class actually belonged to Bangalore. In the sense, I never imagined the fact that I only had out-of-station friends can become a worry to the city as a whole. Now when I look back I realise.
The influx of so-called immigrants into Bangalore is only getting amplified. Ask anyone they'd point it towards the year 2000 that marked the IT boom that Bangalore was the epicentre for. And if you trace this back to the present day situation, you have the answers for the maddening traffic that makes you spend FOUR hours on the road everyday.
Let alone the fact that I inherited bad skin, but its just getting worse each day as I travel on these roads with so much pollution. Forget this, its not like I dreamt of becoming Miss India or something, what about the tension you undergo. It can have serious implications when one rides or drives in Bangalore... Blood pressure and tempers. One has to really be so careful because no matter what, there will be at least 10 vehicles in an hour you will see who are travelling on the wrong side of the road. Either they dont remember what's left and what's right or they just do not care, as is the case with most of the drivers in this city. I have my friends who just returned from a small UK stint and they tell me that in those roads one always lets the other pass first. This got me thinking and I just threw a question at myself, why doesnt this happen here??? But now that I have the answer I started writing this post today.
Here it is: The answer to why people drive rash, don't care about rules, cannot in their wildest dreams think of letting the other pass first and cannot have their emission checks done, and cannot drive on the right side of the road... It is simply because, today in Bangalore 9 out of 10 cars are driven by non-owners, but by paid drivers.
These vehicles include cars for personal use, rented cars, company pick-up vehicles, call taxis etc. The paid drivers do not really care at all about what happens to the car or to other people on the road, that because they are not driving, they are just doing their job for which they get paid. This is why they do not have common road manners. Autorickshaws and buses are the worst when it comes to even acknowledging the fact that other vehicles exist. This is say 70 percent of the vehicular population, the rest is still large in number. The reason they end up driving rash or acquiring behaviour or driving attitude identical to that of paid drivers is because of frustration. People lose control after the first 5 mins of driving because there are just too many people breaking rules. People tend to give up and go with the flow. In fact, at a signal most of the vehicles leave when its 20 secs to Green. And if you wanna be Mr. Goody-two-shoes and wait until the signal actually turns green, you would either be run over by buses behind, which are always in a hurry [wonder how they still manage to be late] or your ear drums would be torn apart by jarring honks from all the vehicles behind.
I have not really thought too much about an answer to this problem. This is because at the rate I am going I think I will end up hiring a driver for my two-wheeler as well, and add to the number of non-owners on the road. Seriously speaking, not much can be done about the paid driver community, but surely things can be done to stop all the breaking of rules. Trust me if I were the traffic police, I would haul up each vehicle which has smoke coming out of its exhaust and cofiscate it. The vehicle would not be returned unless he shows a valid emission test result or gets it done under police supervision.
It gotta stop. There needs to be line drawn to how much we can do this to the environment. It only disgusts me to even think about how people cannot be least bothered when there is jet black smoke that is coming out of the exhaust.
I dont get it, what are companies like Tata, Toyota and so many others doing? They sit every year to only come up with a better model of a petrol car. Which again is mostly an improvised version of a previous one. How long does a country need to take to understand that petrol cars are not the answer for a country which has a population, pollution, infrastructure and oil crisis. Countries that dont even have these issues are adopting electric vehicles as their mode of transport, whats India's problem. Its mostly the mindset, people here still believe that the bigger your car is, the bigger your penis is and the happier your life is.
I dont believe the Reva, the first indegenous Indian electric vehicle company, was laughed at. I mean, you'll see people passing wierd comments about how it looks as it passes by smoothly, without one bit of exhaust or noise. Why would any intelligent person do that? I respect people who have come up with its design, though I do agree that it could be a little better looking, but who cares? This is a start and it needs to be encouraged.
The problem is in a place like Bangalore most of the people who own cars belong to companies that pay for their petrol charges. This makes people believe it is alright to be spending so much on transport. So they do not really see a point in buying an electric vehicle just to save money. But non-petrol cars are beneficial in so many more ways.
India has a me-too attitude most of the times. When the whole world will take to electric vehicles, Indians will just about start doing the research trying to understand what it exactly is. And then the first company that succeeds in copying the designs and concept will proudly announce, actually successfully impressing us Indian consumers, that they are bringing to us the technology the world is popularly using. And then you'll have people deciding to buy it. Why? Because the whole world uses it... like DUH! By then I'm sure, the world would be moving even further, and we'll just be starting to realise.
Trust me, the next time you begin to think your sun-screen company needs to be sued, Sorry think again, its someone else who you need to be waking up.
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