May 2008 Edition
Minus social
marketing, BRT
suffers here. But
look how the world
is taking to buses.
Umesh Anand
New Delhi
A PROJECT meant to carve out a bus corridor and give pedestrians and
cyclists designated space on a 16 km stretch of road in Delhi has resulted in
outbursts of anger and acrimony by middle class car owners.
Called the bus rapid transit system or the BRT, the project is aimed at making
it easier to move around in Delhi, where traffic is unruly. In the absence of
public transport, the number of personal two-wheelers and cars has kept on
increasing, making it difficult now to drive and park.
The BRT has been adopted in cities worldwide because it is cheaper than a metro railway, uses road space in a socially equitable manner, reduces door-todoor travel time, brings down pollution levels and provides an incentive to shift from personal to public transport. The BRT and physically segregated busways have changed the way people travel in Mexico, Curitiba, Paris, Nice, Jakarta, Bogota, Quito, Seoul, Taipei and several other cities. BRTs for Manhattan and London are on the drawing board because of this experience.
International experts, high-power committees and providers of infrastructure finance have over the years vetted the Delhi project and found merit in it. After the first stretch from Ambedkar Nagar to Delhi Gate, five other corridors are planned. Roads account for 21 per cent of Delhi's total area, which is high by international standards.
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
THE Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has just about received pass marks from social sector leaders across the country in an opinion poll conducted for Civil Society by GfK MODE.
Asked to rate the performance of the government in the past four years, 42 per cent of the respondents said it was “neither satisfactory nor dissatisfactory” and 32 per cent said it was “somewhat satisfactory”. On the other hand 13 per cent said they were “very dissatisfied” and 10 per cent “somewhat dissatisfied”. The Congress-led UPA was swept to power on clear promises of bottom-up growth and a new deal for the common man. At that time, all around the UPA was the debris of the ‘India Shining’ claims of the defeated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
If the BJP was seen as having served only the rich, the Congress wanted to stay tuned into reality and be receptive to the needs of the poor. It reached out to NGOs, people’s movements and grassroots activists. The new government drew up a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) with an agenda that contained legislation, reforms and programmes that leaders of peoples’ movements and NGOs have been agitating for since several years. The CMP promised to help the rural sector climb out of poverty by boosting employment, credit, technology, water, education, agriculture, handicrafts and forestry.
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Umesh Anand
I have been one of the thousands of middle class motorists who have found construction of the bus rapid transit (BRT) project in Delhi a bit too much to cope with. Such is the chaos it has brought in its wake at the implementation stage that I have often wondered whether any good at all can come from the project when it is completed. In the absence of signage and traffic police, vehicles have gone helter-skelter. I have often found my self in the wrong lane and wasted precious time getting out of it.
I can therefore understand some of the anger against the BRT. But the fact is that the BRT is an idea gaining currency the world over. By dividing up urban road space so that buses are physically segregated, travel becomes quicker, safer, cheaper and less polluting. People also get the space to cycle and walk, which planners and politicians find improves the quality of life in a city, apart from making it more egalitarian.
If Indian cities are to be engines of growth and change, then to begin with they will have to be more inclusive in their services. If they don’t move in this direction they will become tinderboxes of inequalities and social tension.
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Kavita Charanji
Vrindavan
VISITORS to Vrindavan and the fabled land of Lord Krishna, called Braj Bhoomi, are often taken aback by its ramshackle, dirty condition. It has dried up ancient water bodies or kunds, denuded forests and lots of garbage. It also has a dreaded mining mafia running around with dynamite, digging holes and blowing up sacred hills. “Poor city planning has left Vrindavan with neither vrinda (tulsi) nor van (forest)',” goes an old saying. Thankfully, restoration work is in progress on 5,000 sq km of Braj Bhoomi. It will cover the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Rajasthan.
The work is being carried out by the Braj Foundation, a Delhi based non-profit. The foundation plans to restore and revive the kunds, green the forests and regenerate the Braj hills into pasture land. "As Braj lies in the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur Golden Triangle, it is a buzzing ecotourism destination. In fact, Braj draws 50 million tourists annually, while the Taj Mahal gets two million visitors a year," says Vineet Narain, the foundation's CEO. Drive down to Vrindavan and on the way you can see the foundation's work in progress. At Chameli van in Bhulwana village, Hodal, next to the Anjani Kund (named after Lord Hanuman's mother) the kachcha road is full of fertile soil from de-silting operations. There are noisy earth movers and tractors cleaning up the kund.
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Adil Jawad Khan
Karachi
THE light of democracy in Pakistan was ignited by the lawyers' movement. They led a spirited resistance to uphold the honour of the judiciary. The lawyers faced police, teargas and prison. Their agitation snowballed and gathered momentum with citizens and civil society groups joining in. The lawyer’s black coat became a symbol of protest and a harbinger of change.
Now democracy has been restored. The new Prime Minister, Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, in his first order released all sacked judges who had been detained in their homes. The new government has also announced the restoration of all dislodged judges within 30 days of the formation of the federal cabinet. The lawyers are hopeful that their movement will come to its logical end. Leaders of the lawyers' movement have become heroes. Among them is Justice Rasheed A Rizvi who traces his antecedents to Mumbai and its film industry.
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Riaz Quadir
Versailles
THERE are days when I wake up in the morning and dread the thought of confronting the front pages of newspapers and being consistently reminded of a world that is unravelling at an ever faster rate. Stepping into the real world provides no relief- unless we choose to play the ostrich and seclude ourselves inside some tourism ad-like bubble. Globalization has made sure that you can run (in Nike shoes if you will) but you can't hide. It has robbed us of that bliss of ignorance and forced upon us the folly of knowledge. The saga of Adam's expulsion from paradise continues…
The sub-prime related crisis in not merely a local American phenomenon to be studied from a distance; nor is the food crisis in Vietnam, the Philippines and Bangladesh; or the immigration question in the UK and a myriad other crises big and small scattered across the globe. They are all inter-twined, creating a thicker and thicker cord that is gradually strangling humanity.
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