November 2007 Edition

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Dunu Roy

ON October 15, around 4,000 Blueline bus drivers gathered at a dharamshala in west Delhi to discuss the police crackdown against them. Along with the drivers, the buses also abstained from work on that day. The next day, newspaper headlines screamed “Blue Blackmail” and “Delhi held to ransom” and Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, threatened to invoke ESMA to force the buses back on the road.

The reaction smacked more of vendetta than reasoned sober reporting. And it contrasted starkly to the earlier endorsement of the government stand reported by these same newspapers that Blueline buses should be taken off the roads. Clearly, after the Iraq war, ‘embedded’ journalism has become the order of the day. Heads I win, tails you lose. What is the reason for this legitimisation of the authoritarian line that is being pursued by an aggressive media (and their middle class supporters) baying for blood? Perhaps, some clues to the answer may lie in the statistics that these newspapers produce. For instance, we are mercilessly told that there have been 96 deaths this last year from accidents involving Bluelines. Yet, a perusal of the reports appearing from January to October 2007 in one of the most persistent papers reveals that they have stories for only 32 deaths in 25 accidents.

What is curious is that even the supposed 96 is less than the 122 recorded last year, and this 122 was about 6 per cent of the total road deaths in that year. So why this great outrage over these few accidents? Why is there no attempt to look at the causes of literally thousands of other deaths? Equally curious is what the paper’s reports reveal about the unfortunate people who died. Of the 32, 13 were pedestrians, seven were on two-wheelers, three each were either passengers who had just got off buses or cyclists who came in the way, two were bus commuters, and only one was a motorist! What is the possible reason for this distribution? If the Bluelines were driving in a wayward fashion in the middle of the roads, as alleged by the police, then surely they should have been hitting cars more often. Why is it, then, that buses are forced to share road space with pedestrians, two wheelers, and cyclists – road users who are more likely to be in the inner lanes? And why is the media suddenly so concerned about ordinary people when they haven’t figured on their pages more serious concerns of shelter, livelihoods, and security? Perhaps the concern is simulated and the outrage merely contrived? According to the government’s statistics, almost 60 per cent of road users travel by public buses, 27 per cent by private two and four wheelers (not to mention the somewhat fraudulent figure of 5 per cent on bicycles). Yet, buses comprise only one per cent of vehicles on the road, while private motor vehicles number 91 per cent. And when the ‘clean’ CNG wave came it reduced DTC buses from about 4,400 to 3,000.

So, if the media was so concerned about the common folk why has it not demanded more buses and more road space for the buses? Even eminent judicial concerns decreed way back in 1998 that there should have been 10,000 buses on the roads by 2001. Yet six years later, there are only 8,300 (including the‘rural’ RTVs and 1,200 that ply on inter-city routes!) and the courts remain silent, while the government has just loftily declared (using the so-called ‘killer’ Bluelines as a pretext) that they are placing orders for 4,500 new buses to ‘phase out’ the Bluelines – which will come by 2009, when the demand will be for 16,000 buses! So why do the numbers of buses remain far short of requirements while there seems to be no limit to the number of private vehicles that can be sold in the city? Is it just implementation flaws and corruption or is there something queer going on at the policy level? There is nothing new about the concern with ‘efficient’ functioning of the public transport system. The private buses were brought into the public domain as far back as 1948,precisely on that rationale.

They were made the baby of the Municipal Corporation in 1958, then again reverted to the Union Government in 1971, eventually becoming the responsibility of the Delhi Government in 1996. Meanwhile, as part of‘reforms’, there has been no fresh recruitment into DTC for 19 years while the system has again slowly been outsourced (5,200 of the 8,300 buses are with private owners, the DTC depots have been made‘autonomous’). Obviously, our respected policy makers have tried out all forms of governance and administration over six decades (and three generations) and still not found a solution! On the other hand, while a mere Rs 1,800 crore will be invested in the new buses, the government has already taken huge loans to invest in that other shining icon of ‘public’ transport – the Metro. Phase I costs Rs 6,000 crore, and Phase II will cost another 11,000 crore; and both will together carry an anticipated 26 lakh passengers by 2011, when the buses are already carrying 55 lakh daily. Not only that, the Metro proposes to carry these passengers by taking them off the buses – in other words, making travel more expensive for the common man.

The cheapest ticket costs Rs 7 on the Metro while the buses still manage with Rs 3 for a longer distance – and give concessions to boot!. Hence, obeying the competitive impulse, in the 65 km of Phase I, already 15 routes and 58 buses of DTC, and three routes and 106 buses of STA have been deliberately discontinued and curtailed on Metro routes. In spite of this,the Metro still cannot carry more than one-fourth of the original targets. And there are the 121 km of Phase II to still look forward to! More is to be added to the heady cocktail of steady privatisation, shrinking fleets and personnel, more costly modes of travel, and obfuscation of facts. In the coming run-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2010, not only have 40 flyoversbeen proposed, but also nine car parks, an airport to handle six times more passengers than now, converting the Ring Road intoexpressways, seven corridors for the High Capacity Bus System, and about 170 km of roads to be widened and ‘beautified’. Each one of these activities, which indiscriminately caters to the profligate demand for space by cars, is going to push the inner lane further on to where the pavements were earlier. As it is, most pavements are now illegally occupied by the exorbitant growth of private vehicles which find no other place to park. So where will the pedestrian and the cyclist go? How will they avoid the buses that occupy the same road space? Will deaths and accidents go down? Will there be enough buses for people to travel by? Or will people be forced to buy more two-wheelers just to get to work from home as the city grows further and further apart? Eventually, who are the bluebloods who make these policies and take these decisions? Are they ever held accountable or do the same notables who announced dramatic steps in the preceding years, once again get to announce more dramatic steps when their previous orders fail dismally? Why is it that the judge and the jury and the police and the culprit are all rolled into the same persona and none can distinguish between them? These are the questions a vigilant press and people should be asking in a thriving democracy. They don’t. Because the ‘people’ have now become reduced to puppets, and the journalists have entered the armoured tanks of the oppressor, as yet another ‘war on terror’ is unleashed in the capital city, in the name of truth, democracy and justice, on a gullible and unsuspecting people.

Dunu Roy is an activist with the Hazards Centre in New Delhi

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