Democracy Rides a Bus

For close to a month now, the newspapers in Delhi have been busy covering the fracas caused by the decision of the government to introduce the Bus Rapid System on a fast track. The intent of the government might have been good; but the experience from the phenomenon proves one thing that of course should have been obvious long ago - that technology is a great too but no panacea. Ultimately technological solutions have to operate in society and society is inhabited by human beings, not robots who will dance to a piper’s tune.

I missing link in the government’s high powered group, the Delhi Integrated Multi-modal Transit System (DIMTS) Delhi Integrated Multi-modal Transit System (DIMTS) has got experience in several fields and has obviously got strong political backing but it does not appear to have thought of including a behavioral psychologist or an anthropologist in its technical team who could have assessed and evaluated the traffic usage pattern in Delhi and offered some recommendations as to whether the BRT would or would not work.

If one looks at the history of the BRT, one finds that it was

“first invented in Curitiba, Brazil in 1974. Other cities that are now using BRT are Bagota Quito, Perreira, Guayaquil, Guatemala City, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Miami, Leeds and Adelaide. Cities like Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul and Lagos have taken up the BRT system now. In India, the system has been partly taken up in Indore, Pune and Ahmedabad, other than Delhi.”

Although the success stories over all seem to be quite a few, and Delhi definitely needs some urgent solution to its traffic woes, simply because a committee containing some scientists of the IIT generate an idea and a group chaired by the Chief Secretary endorses it, it does not mean that it will work. Besides Delhi could have learnt from the experiences of Pune. Pune got the country’s first BRT system, which was implemented one-and-a-half years ago. What was presented as a panacea for Pune’s continuously worsening traffic condition has only worsened the traffic situation there. The much-publicized new traffic mode created major controversy in the first few months of its implementation when the city saw five casualties on the BRT stretch. Lack of awareness about the new system and inadequate traffic sense were the main culprits.

This is not the first time that a traffic project has been handled in such a ham fisted manner. A couple of years ago, the government introduced cycle tracks in many parts of the city, to keep cyclists off the main road. A patch of the road was converted without any fanfare into a cycle track meant exclusively for them. All well except that the cyclists never knew, since no publicity was ever provided. So the cyclists continued cycling where they always had on the main roads; dodging trucks and buses and cars like always.

After a while, with the tracks remaining unused by the cyclists, as was inevitable, the tracks became the haunt of road side motor mechanics who would park their vehicles in the track as they awaited repair. With heavy vehicles routinely using the tracks, soon the tracks were developing potholes and with in less than a year they were no more recognizable as cycle tracks. The scheme was then given a quiet burial but it is understood that with the Commonwealth Games coming up and the government wanting to spruce up the city as best as it can, the cycle tracks are being introduced again. One has to wait and watch if the planning is any better this time round.

The lesson for us in democracy is that sadly the common man who is the most important stakeholder is seldom consulted or his ideas sought for. A bunch of experts sprout up and it does not matter who is in power for each regime has its favorites; these experts practically lay claim to messianic wisdom and come up with “solutions” which the am Aadmi” is not expected to understand and over night it is implemented at a huge cost to the tax payer. Ultimately the issues like the BRT reveal only one thing that democracy is for us Indians only one thing- land up elector’s ID in hand once in five years at the polling booth and then go home and get doped. The benign leaders we elect will look down beatifically and take care of us with the wisdom they alone have.

The Shadows Series III - Paradigms of Power

Recently the pet dog of the Police Commissioner of Delhi got lost. The dog- a 12 year old Daschund went missing last Saturday and sent the establishment into a tizzy. But Toto is one lucky thing for its master wields a lot of power and so the police establishment swung into action to find and restore the pet to its delighted owner, who had announced a reward of Rs10,000( out of the Commissioner’s own pocket) for the dog.

Looking at the time available to the Station House Officer of the Nizamuddin Police Station and others to track the dog, one could perhaps safely assume that Delhi is a crime free city where the police find diversion in looking for lost pets but the facts are that Delhi is not just the political capital of the country but also the Crime capital of the nation too. “3,244 criminal cases - including 467 murders, 581 rapes, 1764 dacoity and other heinous crimes - were registered in the city during the 2007 .During the last year, the capital also emerged more bloodthirsty compared to 2006 when 462 murders had taken place” .

Further, according to the National Human Rights Commission, the capital records the maximum number of cases of missing children. In India more than 44,000 children of all ages go missing annually and Delhi has topped the list with 6.7 percent of the total cases. I The NHRC report goes onto say that of the missing children, only about 80 percent are eventually traced. Given the pay hike given to the “public servants” so that they can serve bettter, it is possible now that senior bureaucrats will now cultivate more exotic and extravagant pets which if lost can be tracked.

But this is not a reflection on dogs or police commissioners or the pay commission- but on power. Power on the face of it has nothing shadowy about it – if you have it, you flaunt it- if you don’t , you moan sitting in a corner and cringe before those who have it. One would have you believe that if you don’t parade it, you don’t have it. And lest there be any doubt, you display it blatantly - be it in the red beacon on your car or the gun toting security guards by your side or the slap that an MLA administers on a hapless commoner.

It looks graceless when people with the power which only their position gives them use it so coarsely – whether it be by slapping a liftman or using the hapless, over worked people under you to look for a missing pet ( for a report on the working conditions of the Delhi Police look here) or raping a woman or through in any of the innumerable ways in which we demonstrate our power, not to lift up the weak but to further crush those who are already trampled.

There is a sad anachronism about the society we live in that people who are paid hefty salaries to serve exhibit raw muscle power at its most base or use it for various forms of gratification. Anachronistic because grand old men like the late Baba Amte who died recently, at the ripe age of 92, felt the call to serve and with problems of the spine which rendered him bed ridden and problems of the heart which a broken pace maker could not repair used to trundle through Anandwan in a bullock cart. The sad paradigm of power is that the truly powerful seem to be frail of body like broken reeds like Gandhiji or Baba Amte or Nanaji Deshmush or Mother Teresa while their shadows flaunt a caricature of power through golden cages of glitzy cars or the grandeur of Lutyen’s bungalows displaying vain glory in the guise of the emperor’s new clothes as in Hans Christen Anderson. Truely Gandhiji in his loin cloth was far better clothed than those in resplendent robes of office unaware of their nakedness.

Death of the Chowkidar

When I was in school and lived in Delhi, we often slept on the terrace on the hot, stuffy summer nights. The nights were cool and pleasant and it was still possible on most times to see a sky full of stars. I would drift off to sleep trying to identify the few stars and constellations I knew. The silence of the night would be interrupted by the occasional burst of a car engine and the barking of stray dogs and the rhythmic tap –tap –tap of the chowkidar’s stick along with a shrill puff on his whistle.

Those were idyllic days when crime was little and mostly restricted to petty burglary and nothing more. I never actually saw the chowkidar more than once a month when he came along to collect his wages. He was a genial looking man from the hills, generically referred to as Bahadur and his kindly face inspired no fear or terror but a kind of gentle assurance of protection. The tap-tap –tap of the chowkidar’s stick was a sure antidote against the occasional nightmare and a child’s fears. With my parents by my side at home and the chowkidar blowing his reassuring whistle through the night, a child had nothing to fear.

After school, I left Delhi and came back after a long while; it seemed that an era had passed. Of course, politically, the country had changed a lot. The roots of terrorism were every where – Kashmir was boiling , and so was Assam , closer to Delhi , Khalistani terrorists were rising and had garrisoned off the hallowed Golden Temple and shortly when after Operation Blue Star , Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated by her own body guards, it seemed that the age of trust was over. When the anti Sikh riots happened, the social fabric of trust vanished not just for the elite living in Lutyen’s bungalows but also for the common man. Some where along the way, the chowkidar, the kindly, courteous man, who protected every one, harmed no one and knew every man, woman and child on his beat was gone. His time and role was over.

In place of the mild mannered chowkidar who often served for years if not a life time , now you have the rough, brawny, and uncouth and in your face “security guard” who inspires much terror and little confidence. Indistinctive and impersonal in their often ill fitting uniforms, they swagger around their beat often around a spiked gate erected artificially over a neighborhood designed in gentler times to be always accessible and open.

These guards know no one and care for no one except for their monotonous security drill but they are mushrooming everywhere. ATMs, housing societies, office complexes they all have dispensed with the chowkidar or his morphed cousin in the offices, the Durwan and have hired security guards. The chowkidar greeted every one with a warm smile and a salaam but the security guard greets you with a shabby notebook and a cheap ballpoint pen where to get to your best friend’s house, you have to supply every conceivable personal detail that he requires.

Are we getting better security for all these guards? May be, may be not. The crime statistics don’t tell an encouraging story. But even though the guards may be necessary in today’s day and age and the whistle blowing watch man of yore has been replaced by siren blowing police patrol jeeps and the stiff and starched guards of firms like Group 4, provide a kind of machine like politeness, I will still miss the endearing smile and care of the chowkidar whose heart was bigger than his stick and whose bark was louder than his bite. He belonged to a time when innocence, kindness and caring were the norm and the gentle tap of his stick signified a benign presence guarding us all. The chowkidar is dead but may his memory endure forever.

Education Preserving Elitism ?

Delhi’s (and India's) public schools are actually private schools. Getting access there is no less a achievement than tackling the IIT’s JEE. Perhaps no where is this more true than in the Nation's capital , where even getting your child into a kindergarten class is so nightmarish that they are governed by court directives and the admissions process is monitored by the Delhi High Court. We have none of the elite schools like Doon , Scindia and Mayo and their kind. The public schools here at best can boast of a modest pedigree. Although some schools are better known than others, the history of most of the other "public schools" in the National Capital dates back to no more than a few decades. This means that most of these are institutions of the post independence era and could be reasonably expected to be shaped by the egalitarian edge that gilded the first decades of independence India.

Such sadly is not the case. While the truly elitist institutions have literally priced themselves out of the common man's reach including perhaps some chunk of India's burgeoning middle class and the nouveau rich , the wanna be institutions in the city , money making institutions as they largely are or have become , can not afford to be too pricey. Bu they can afford and do afford the luxury of being choosy with in the basket of choices they are provided with, thereby fostering a false elitism.

In Delhi, we have a plethora of schools by the name of "Model Senior Secondary School", Happy….. School. St. …. Academy, ….. Convent School and others like them. They are the local neighborhood schools , from whom perhaps , no one has too many expectations. But then there are other schools with some kind of bloodline and ideology from whom one does have expectations. Often all these schools are supposedly charitable institutions and have been allotted land at confessional rates for the “public good”. But public schools almost invariably – be they meritorious or mediocre, practice inbreeding by restricting the crop of students they will admit. For instance, last year a daughter of a police constable was denied admission to a school in its higher classes simply because the girl's English wasn't good enough. This school and its many siblings are known not just for its glamour but also its ideology and one would have thought that it would open its doors to those hitherto deprived of a good English language education but earnestly striving for one.

While following guidelines of the High Court Ganguly Committee, the schools have a discretionary twenty points. This combined with other factors like marks allotted for siblings already studying and for parents who are already alumni of the schools in question and the neighborhood system wherein residents of geographical areas in proximity to the school alone are given preference , all add up to preserve the status quo of the privileged as usually the best schools are usually located in a particular part of town. These are again the areas where typically the influential and the advantaged live. By default then , although the Delhi High Court’s intentions might be noble in not wanting the children to be stressed out through interviews and the like, our school managements will always find a way to defeat the fundamental purpose of education by enabling mediocre schools to provide mediocre education to the vast majority while the favored few enjoy the spoils of a vastly superior education.