Delhi's disastrous roads

All of us in Delhi must've read about the pretty horrific accident filmmaker Pamela Rooks was involved in this morning. She's undergone brain surgery, the papers report, and is in a drug-induced coma at the moment. The newspapers, of course, didn't stop at just the accident: they went on to solemnly report the sorry state Delhi roads are in, and provided statistics for the past two years on just how many accidents there have been in Delhi every year, month, day; just how many are killed, and the vehicles they were driving at the time of death. What they forgot to mention, but what we all know, is that it's not so much Delhi roads as Delhi drivers who are the problem. What they also forgot to mention is a possible solution. Perhaps because there doesn't seem to be any.

Delhi roads, at any given point in time, are crammed with cars (enormous ones resembling trucks in some cases), buses (of various sizes), autorickshaws, scooters and bikes, bicycles, carts, jaywalkers, dogs and cows. Driving in this veritable menagerie is a feat in itself, and the situation is compounded by the fact that, first, everyone - cows, DTC bus drivers, yuppies in their big flashy cars, daredevil bikers and demented auto drivers - thinks they own pretty much every road in the city; and second, most people driving on Delhi roads should never have been given a licence to drive anywhere.

In my opinion, everything boils down to a lack of responsibility on the part of pretty nearly everyone in Delhi - the drivers, the pedestrians, the law and order situation, the way anyone can get a licence without knowing how to drive well enough. (Here's how my husband got his licence - he was told by this guy who was taking his test 'sau gaj aage chalaiye' ['Drive a 100 yards forward']; 'Ab reverse mein karke say gaj peche chalaiye' ['Now put the car in reverse and drive 100 yards back']. And that was it. The test was passed with flying colours, and the licence given. My husband might be responsible on the streets, but a lot of others who get their licences under similar circumstances are not.) The Alto that hit Pamela Rooks' Landcruiser was being driven by a drunk driver. The car had already careened out of control, hit the divider and flipped over by the time the Landcruiser came along. It landed on the biger car, and through no fault of hers, Pamela Rooks in in hospital in a coma.

Two points emerge from this incident. First, that it took a Pamela Rooks to make the story of yet another accident on Delhi roads newsworthy. Hundreds of people die in accidents through no fault of theirs every year, but their lives are never considered important enough to dwell upon. The parents of the young men who were travelling in the Alto (two of them died) are vehemently denying any possibility of their sons having been drunk. And in a bizarre twist (if the Hindustan Times is to be believed), an FIR has been filed against the driver of the Landcruiser. Why, pray, has that been done? What is he to blame for, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Second, what are the odds that people are going to forget about this incident in a couple of days' time and that irresponsible, rash and, yes, drunk drivers will continue to raise hell on Delhi streets? And when accidents happen, the guilty party will buy their way out of trouble with the help of money and muscle (remember the BMW case?). We as a nation - and possibly as a race - have become increasingly self-absorbed. Our social responsibility has become confined to just our immediate circle of loved ones. People in Delhi will continue to do as they please without a thought to the consequences their actions can have - they will drive with complete disregard where rules are concerned, they will take resort to physical violence at the merest hint of provocation, and they will not care less if they've had too much to drink before they get behind the wheel. And when lives are lost, they're usually of hapless people who, like Rooks, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As for the rest of us, we'll just shake our heads sorrowfully and get on with our lives.