We are a brave lot

Published in Top Five / Sriperumbudur News / April 2008
A few years ago, at an inaugural function, the then Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran, in quite an impromptu speech, mentioned that we Indians loved to break rules and undertake shortcuts, wherever possible. I will add that we Indians are actually daredevils and love to take on a challenge, even if it means breaking rules and traffic laws.

We can’t stand a One Way sign. Who do you think the cops are? We ask. So, we deliberately enter a One Way street from the wrong end and even curse the traffic coming from the right direction! If the traffic signal is on Red, we must stop a few feet beyond the Stop line. Who the heck put that line there and ask me to stop at it? We ask.

Traffic jams are quite frequent in most of our roads, these days. But, if you are a bike or scooter rider and tend to be caught at the rear end of a snaking line of vehicles, our impatience will not allow us to wait it out. We must be there at the front! This is where the pavement comes in handy – to hell with the pedestrians; after all, don’t they walk on the road? So, to pavement, takes the biker and he emerges triumphant at the beginning of the jam.

Zebra crossing? What’s that? Are we in a zoo, or something, we ask? Might is right, whether it is a two, three, four or six wheeled vehicle. More the wheels, more the might. The lowly pedestrian can wait, the vehicle owner thinks. After all, the man on the street is not burning any fuel, unlike the precious petrol or diesel. So, let him wait or get run over! One less human on the face of the earth is not going to make any big difference. It might even be better for the ozone layer protection.

Talking of pavements reminds me of….yes, pavements! Do they exist? Well, on some roads they do for a width of a foot or so, the road having been widened gradually over a period of time, to make room for the burgeoning vehicular traffic. On some roads, they are so wide that people have set up shops, restaurants and temporary houses. I think, the pavements should be taken over by the Housing Board and the residents taxed for occupying them permanently. So, you say, that most of them are shops and it is not the Housing Board, but the Tax Department that needs to take them over.

Maybe the Government should form a new corporation called Pavement Board and tax all those who set up shop or residence on the pavements. You say that this would only make their occupation more legal? I ask, are they ever going to vacate anyway? Don’t most of them have power connections and even ration cards? The Government spends a lot of the taxpayers’ money on periodically digging up and re-laying the pavements with granite or concrete slabs. By generating revenue from the pavement dwellers, honest taxpayer’s money can be channelled elsewhere – like into politicians pockets.

With increased vehicular population, I am sure the road taxes collected must be quite hefty. Road taxes? What roads? You ask. Well, whatever part of the road that is left over from digging trenches, manholes, potholes, fractures etc. Road taxes seem to be collected to pay those who periodically dig up roads, patch them up and re-dig! Have you ever wondered why there is so much of resistance from certain quarters for concretisation of roads? How will the human chain of beneficiaries make money from the periodic laying of roads? Someone once said that the vehicle manufacturers are in cahoots with the State Governments. Keep the roads as bad as possible, so that more vehicles will be bought, more tyres will be changed and more fuel will be consumed…the list will go on.

Talking of roads, have you ever wondered why you see many buildings on either side regularly sinking below the road height? Bad construction? Nope. Our method or road laying is to keep on laying new surfaces one on top of the other. By the time the next fifty years dawn, all our roads will equal the height of flyovers. We will be a city of skyways.

We Indians love pollution of every kind – noise, air, you name it, they are all there. Driving rules say that most of the time, keep both hands on the steering wheel. We do follow this to the ‘T’ – one hand on the wheel and the other permanently punching the horn. Mercifully, many years ago, the transport corporations banned the use of air horns in buses. So now the menacing drivers rev the engines to scare the small cars away from their path. The only chap who is not unduly perturbed by this show of might is the auto driver – he is a law unto himself. No lane discipline for him – he has got to reach his destination in the shortest and fastest route/time possible.

We love this chaos as much as we love ourselves and the attention that we can draw – even if it means breaking a law or bending a rule. We’re different, how else can we be a race apart from the degenerating West? Let the world go by and we will chart a course unique for our survival.

Nikhil Raghavan