I haven’t been through Mumbai in a while. My recent trips have taken me to Delhi and Bangalore, both of which have brand new airports, built quite recently. I was curious about Mumbai.

So I asked a question of Facebook: Anyone flown into or out of Mumbai recently? How does the airport compare with the new airport in Delhi?

“I flew in in early July…Mumbai is a disaster,” said S.

Ricky Surie disagreed. “Mumbai is much better than New Delhi: you get from plane to car in 30 minutes. New Delhi is awful: you have to walk many miles from the gate to the immigration desk. After that, baggage is mercifully close “

I know what he means. Delhi’s old outdated airport was just that efficient. It was small, so there wasn’t far to walk; staffing had been stepped up, reducing the long lines so common in prior years; and getting from plane to car was faster than at any other airport I visited. Even big modern snazzy ones like Singapore and Dubai. Now Delhi’s just such a modern snazzy airport, and it’s a long hike to the gates.

But Akhil disagreed: “No comparison- Delhi Airport is World Class- Mumbai Airport is still a construction site.”

I stopped by Yelp to see what other reviewers had to say. Some people liked the new terminal; a few mentioned the service, and one reviewer the “air of calm” (though she also said the tarmac was chaotic, and the bus she was in had to honk its way through to the plane). But… many others disliked the service, found the airport dirty, and the air conditioning ineffective.

A TAXI TALE

The world over, taxi tales are like fish stories: Everyone has one.

Here’s one from Naveen Anand, who noted that the touts have shifted base from Delhi to Mumbai. “Last visit I had to take a cab from Mumbai airport to Wadala… Didn’t see the pre-paid counter before exiting. Cabbie asked for slip..I said what slip?… He said if no slip, please leave! When I got off, he offered to take me for Rs 600, saying the slip would be for Rs 700! I declined… Finally another cabbie took Rs 200 in advance — and dropped me outside the airport to put me in another cab to which he paid Rs 150.00 !!”

IS HYDERABAD THE BEST?

S. figures Hyderabad trumps the lot. “The best airport in India today is Hyderabad — combination of world class, super efficient baggage handling, the right size, competitive by the meter radio cab system outside exit, stunning landscaping for the first few kilometers…”

Ricky Surie had the last word: “Hyderabad is great, but the Bangalore airport is on another planet !”

I remembered that article recently when I spent some time in Bangalore, or as it now calls itself, Bengaluru. This is a city I’ve been visiting for years since the late 1970s, as it transformed from a bucolic garden city to the chaotic urbanism of today.

These days, Bangalore is an extensive building site, with new multistoreyed developments coming up, an underground metropolitan railway under construction, half-built overpasses, and excavated roads. Many of the streets are narrow neighborhood roads, built at a time when cars were scarce and parking seemed a waste of space. Amid all this is the traffic: cars and trucks, motor-bikes and scooters, auto-rickshaws and cyclists, and a few stray dogs and cats and cows (though far fewer than I saw in Delhi).

Accustomed to the orderly-even-when-clogged traffic flows of the US, I found the chaos of the traffic annoying at first, especially when stuck in it.  The only rule the traffic followed with any consistency was stopping at the red light. Beyond that, it wasn’t that drivers violated traffic rules, it was evident that de facto, there were no rules.

Then, as I observed it, it seemed… familiar. That’s when I realized –  the traffic moves organically, like a migrating herd of animals. It seeks possibilities and general directions. Drivers look for openings they can move into, while being aware of a limited personal space around other vehicles. They indicate their intentions by starting the move, rather than by using mechanical signals.

And, like animals in a herd, they can be noisy; the extended loud honking of trucks, the irritable buzzing of auto-rickshaws, the ringtones of reversing vehicles. The horn is a communication device, and they are no shyer about using them than a flock of geese settling on a lake.

Now it all made sense. The rules for herds: Move in the same general direction as the herd; try not to bump into others; if you see an opening, use it; let others in the herd know of your presence by calling out when necessary. Those are the traffic rules, too. (And red lights, of course.)

]]> http://rupabose.com/2011/07/29/herds-of-vehicles-in-bangalore/feed/ 2 webmaster blore traffic blore traffic 2 http://rupabose.com/2011/04/22/ralegan-siddhi-a-village-in-india-makes-good/ http://rupabose.com/2011/04/22/ralegan-siddhi-a-village-in-india-makes-good/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:21:23 +0000 webmaster http://rupabose.com/?p=1462 Continue reading →]]> We’ve been hearing a lot of success stories from India in the last few years, but they’ve mainly been urban stories.

From rural areas, we’re hearing more about the price of success: water tables impacted by industrial development; farm land sold to companies who can’t employ the uneducated farm workers who formerly made a precarious living there; pesticide poisoning inadvertent or deliberate.

So I was particularly pleased to get a 2008 paper (co-authored with Trishna Satpathy) from my friend Dr Aasha Kapur Mehta, an economist who works in the area of Chronic Poverty. It’s the story of one small village, Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra. It’s the story of one man, Anna Hazare (who’s  recently been in the news for his battles against corruption). And it’s especially appropriate for Earth Day.

THE VILLAGE BEFORE

This is Ralegan Siddhi before 1975: A village fallen into poverty on the back of a fragile ecosystem and recurrent drought.  Most years, it doesn’t grow enough of any crop to feed the villagers. Well-water’s available only at a depth of 65 feet, and the wells go dry in the summer. Men have left, looking for jobs, but uneducated and unsophisticated, they don’t earn enough to send much money home. (The village  school only goes to 4^th grade and only 10% of the kids attend it anyway.) Farmers borrowed from money-lenders, and now they’ve lost their land when they couldn’t repay their loans.

And – it’s gotten worse. One starving resident had a brainwave; he started an illegal-but-very-profitable liquor business. Soon, others copied him. As villagers drink away their troubles, the place is awash in booze, domestic violence against women, and rapidly increasing debt.

The leadership of the village, considering the whole thing hopeless, focus on what they can salvage from it – government grant money and local power. As often happens in India in these situations, they’re notoriously corrupt.

A major drought in 1972 brought in various charitable organizations to help. The government tried to build a tank to catch rainwater and improve the village’s water situation. The project’s screwed up and fails to harvest water. No one is surprised.

And then came Anna Hazare.

AND THEN CAME ANNA HAZARE

Bapurao Hazare (Anna, pronounced un-nah means ‘elder brother’ in Marathi and it’s used as a title in respect and affection) came from a Ralegan family, but as a child moved in with his uncle in Mumbai to go to school. Eventually he joined the Indian Army.  In 1975, he took his Army pension, and went back to Ralegan Siddhi.

Though they didn’t know it at the time, they were in luck.

Hazare started with a simple but costly gesture – using his own money to rebuild the decrepit village temple, which had lost all its wooden components to alcohol-fueled theft. Rural India is nothing if not religious, (well, maybe not the liquor vendors) and people chipped in to help. They had no money, but they donated the labor.

After that, Anna Hazare’s stock in the village was so high that villagers started coming to him to resolve disputes. He formed a Youth Group of young men from the village, and started campaigning against booze. Pretty soon, the illegal bars were closing down. Some pressure from the Youth Group probably helped.

Having got everyone’s attention and respect, he sold the villagers on some important principles:

• No addictions to liquor or anything else;
• Smaller families through family planning;
• No tree-felling;
• No grazing animals on public land, which had been overgrazed into wasteland.

Oh, and local volunteerism: Eventually, they would settle on one work-day in fifteen from every able-bodied adult. This involved everyone in the village, and provided the labor for some important changes.

SLOWING THE WATER, SAVING THE LAND

Rain came irregularly to Ralegan Siddhi, and the water didn’t stay. The degraded land sloped, the hard surface absorbed little, and the run-off took away more topsoil. Well-water ran deep, seasonal and unreliable. Government projects failed; no one cared enough to do a good job. Until Anna Hazare.

He started getting people to build low dams to harvest rainwater and replenish the water table. They contoured hillsides and planted them with trees and shrubs. In 1981-82, the government selected the village for COWDEP, one of its initiatives to conserve and improve depleted wastelands. This time, with Anna Hazare’s leadership, the villagers supervised the projects. He even managed to get the faulty 1975 tank rebuilt; and this time, with local oversight, it was done right.

The water table rose, and they shared to cost of digging wells. Ralegan Siddhi was no longer a wasteland.

Ralegan Siddhi had suffered from the Tragedy of the Commons in a bad way. Half-starved animals grazed the wasted land; the grass refused to regenerate. Hazare encouraged the villagers to grow trees, tapping into a governmental forestry program that provided free saplings. The leaves gave green fodder for animals now fenced away from the not-actually-pasture and stall-fed instead. The grass-land revived — and milk yields quadrupled.

WATER FROM THE CANAL

Faced with widespread poverty, the Indian government tries. It starts thousands of projects designed to improve rural conditions, and many of them fail. The Kukadi Canal, only 3 km from Ralegan Siddhi, had many such examples. Over a 100 lift-irrigation projects had been set up to bring canal-water to the fields; all failed but one – in Ralegan Siddhi.

What it had was better organization, so the farmers could unite to pay the necessary capital costs and the electricity bills in an equitable way. Eventually, the canal supplied 40% of the village’s water needs. Now it could plant not just drought-resistant millet and sorghum, but actually grow vegetables and fruit trees.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH ECOLOGY

This is Ralegan Siddhi now:  By Indian rural standards, it’s wealthy. Incomes have risen ten-fold. Water’s available in the village; women – the traditional bringers of water – no longer have to walk a mile or two to fetch it.  The village’s growing prosperity has attracted services; a bank is moving in, a doctor practices there,  and the government has opened a clinic.

In 1995, Ralegan got a new school going up to 10^th grade, though not before they threatened a hunger strike until the government certified it. In contrast to the pre-1975 situation, all the children go to school regularly; and 95% complete 10^th grade, India’s school-leaving grade. Physical education allows many boys to pass Army fitness tests, a passport to  regular employment and later a steady pension. The children are involved in the volunteer efforts to plant trees and maintain dams, learning at the same time about the importance of the village’s ecology.

By the time my friend Aasha visited there in May 2007, the village was green and tree-shaded though May’s the hottest time of the year. Here’s what she writes: “Lush green trees lined the road leading to the centre of the village and the green fields were in direct contrast with the rather barren landscape outside the village. Mango, guava and tamarind trees surrounded the Training Centre. The wells had plenty of water.”

But that’s not all the story. Anna Hazare involved the whole village in these efforts, including people of lower castes. In time, this allowed reforms to break some of the traditional caste barriers. More than just the physical changes, he’s transformed how the village operates, and its power structure.

(Note: This post is based on the paper Escaping Poverty: The Ralegan Siddhi Case, by Aasha Kapur Mehta and Trishna Satpathy and published by the Indian Institute of Public Administration’s Chronic Poverty Centre as Working Paper No. 38. I’ve never been to Ralegan Siddhi myself. If I’ve inadvertantly introduced errors, leave a comment and I’ll fix them!)

(And they’re a refreshing counterpoint to the irritating call-center interruptions from Dish Network…)

I knew something was wrong when I went into my Yahoo email account a couple of days ago. The list of emails in my inbox looked fine, but when I clicked on one entitled  ”Meeting next week?” instead of the expected note from my friend, it was spam. I presumed it was a Yahoo glitch, and carried on.

But when I went to Google, it was clear this wasn’t just any little glitch. The same thing was happening with my Google searches. They were getting hijacked to evil sites like “Ta*zinga” and “add*edsuccess” (The asterisks are mine. Just to be safe.)

So I ran a full scan with Microsoft Security Essentials. A couple of hours later it came up with the culprit: a Trojan called Tracur.Gen!B — which it said it had removed.

It hadn’t. My Searches were still being hijacked, and another full scan gave me the exact same result: Trojan:JS/Tracur.Gen!B

TIME TO CALL MICROSOFT

This time, I knew to go directly to Microsoft’s Security people for help. (I couldn’t get to the forums in any case, with all my searches being redirected.) They’d been winners the last time, the young people in Chennai. I emailed, got my support case number and the phone number to call. The last time, I’d gotten through almost instantly. Not now. Instead, I got put on endless hold of music and commercial messages. I gave up. Night- time would be better.

Around 10 p.m. I got through much faster, to “Jason”  who was possibly Jaisingh or Janak, I don’t know. (Or may even actually be  Jason. ) I explained the problem, then told him that the last time, it had been Kaspersky’s tdsskiller that fixed the problem.

“This is more powerful than Kaspersky,” Jason told me. I visualized a videogame screen, Tracur and Kaspersky battling it out in armor with swords. My best bet, he thought, would be to run MRT (Microsoft’s Malware Removal Tool) and then call them back. It would take several hours, he said. So I ran it, and it took several hours, at the end of which it showed… nothing. But my searches were still being hijacked.

RAHUL TO THE RESCUE

I called them back, and this time Rahul answered the phone and took my case number. He cut to the chase, sharing my computer, running some searches for and with Bing (I have Google as my home page), and noting how those got redirected. Then he ran Kaspersky. It showed… nothing, again nothing. But searches were still being hijacked. So Jason was right. I pictured Tracur standing with a victorious foot on fallen Kaspersky’s chest.

“How come Microsoft Security Essentials didn’t block this?” I asked, annoyed.  If this problem didn’t get fixed, this machine was doomed to spend its remaining days as an isolated super-typewriter with no internet access.

At this point, Rahul (who still controlled my computer) removed my existing Internet Explorer. “You’ll lose all your cookies and saved passwords and settings,” he said apologetically before he started.

“Go for it,” I said. Who cared about cookies when the searches were being stolen? “Is it a browser problem? I just got rid of Firefox because it seemed to be lodged there, but that didn’t fix it.”

“Sometimes,” he said, a bit doubtfully. Then he downloaded the latest version of Explorer.

And wondrously, the searches were back to normal. It was now maybe 3 a.m., and worth every minute of the time it took.

Thanks, guys! Great job.

(Later, I ran another full scan with Microsoft Security Essentials. This time, it also showed nothing. I have my fingers crossed the machine stays clean.)

###

And yes, my tech-expert friends, I know I should be running Linux. I just find the learning curve a bit too steep…

My first impressions were okay, looks like every other shiny new airport now. I’ve flown into Changi (Singapore) when it was new, and Chek Lap Kok when it replaced Kai Tak’s thrill ride (Hong Kong). There’s a certain new-airport vibe. Long corridors, new carpet, pristine walls, oversized architecture.

Mentally comparing it with the little old airport I’d become accustomed to, I started tallying the Good, the Bad, and the Mucked Up.

THE GOOD

• The bathrooms! Finally, clean, world-class bathrooms. As a concession to Indian toilet hygiene, they have water available for ablutions. They had attendants who kept an eye on the place and cleaned up at intervals, something unnecessary in most countries but a very nice amenity in a nation where some percentage of travelers are not accustomed to Western-style toilets.

• Bright and light. The corridors are broad, the colors reasonable (white with reds and yellows), and most of the travelators working.

• Not crowded. It may have been the times I landed and left, or it may be the size of the place. It wasn’t at all crowded.

• Vending machines at every gate, selling water and soft-drinks, and flavored potato chips. The bottles of water were Rs10-20 (about 20-50 cents). In San Francisco International, they rip you off at $2 or so. Of course, in San Fran you can also take your own empty bottle and refill it at a drinking fountain, a risk I still would not take in India. (I only drink boiled or bottled water when I visit there.)

• Separate security lines for ladies and gentlemen. Everywhere else, toilets are separated by gender. In India, they’ve started separating security lines. I’m listing it under good because it actually seems to work pretty efficiently. (The picture here is from Bangalore airport, but it’s the same in Delhi.)

• [Edited to Add:  No more signs prohibiting photography. For decades, India forbade photography both at airport and on planes. No more.]

THE BAD

• Oh what a trek! One of my complaints about modern airports is the long distances one must walk. Travelators (moving walkways) help; but this airport has long stretches that lack them. I departed from Gate # 13, and it compares with the worst of Heathrow (London). Once you arrive there, you’re in a barren wilderness of carpet and you don’t feel like hiking all the way back to where you might find coffee or a snack or books. Thank heavens for my Kindle… and those vending  machines! Gate #14 (opposite Gate #13) is as bad. If your flight leaves from either one, factor in 30-40 minutes extra. I saw a just- married couple galloping down the corridor, her henna-stained hand in his, while he tried to urge her along without her twisting her golden-high-heeled ankles… I hope they made their flight.

• The shops. I fondly recall a small but wonderful little jewelry store at the old airport, which sold  silver-and-semi-precious-stone pendants, necklaces, bracelets and ear-rings in creative Indian designs. There were a few other handicraft-type shops, selling silk scarves and Indian clothing. All of them were pretty busy. The shops in this airport are the typical glitzy big-Western-brands, and they were empty. One little kiosk (called Kala Yatra, if I recall correctly) was crowded: It had the Indian style jewelry and scarves, though not the selection and quality that the old shops at the old airport had.

• The art. Initially, I was pleasantly surprised. The old airport had a wonderful frieze by Hussain, and I’d sort of hoped it had been preserved. If it was, I didn’t see it. But they had some great new paintings by Paresh Maity in welcoming shades of red. When I went downstairs, though, I was accosted by a huge display of hands in various mudras (hand signs). The gigantic hands were silvery plastic — or so it seemed — and were mounted on a background of copper-colored discs. It looked like the worst of 1960s public decor. Later, I saw similar over-sized sculptural artifacts elsewhere in the airport. This is *so* not the best India has to offer. Someone help!

THE MUCKED UP

• Things that don’t work. One of the travelators was out of order, which I would have minded less if it hadn’t been part of the Long Trek to Gate 13. Several of the vending machines had Out of Order signs on them. One that didn’t whined and spat out every note I tried to feed it. I finally found one that did work, but it had a different and less interesting selection of flavored potato chips…

• Missing personnel. So my flight from Bangalore arrived in Delhi at 10.30 p.m. It was crowded; many people were morning/ evening commuters. It took a while to get off the flight, but eventually we all deplaned, hurried down the passenger walkway… into a dead end. The door was locked. The person who was supposed to open it wasn’t there, gone for a coffee or something. We waited. Eventually, someone walked back to the plane and told the staff, and perhaps they radio’d someone, I don’t know. Anyway, they eventually let us out, after a 10-15 minute wait. “This happens regularly,” said one of the commuters. He sounded experienced.

• Software snags. More seriously, they haven’t got all the bugs out of the air traffic control system, which has had technical glitches for some months now. It wasn’t reassuring to read, the day before I traveled, this headline: Ten tense minutes that tested Delhi ATC. The article that followed blithely assured us that in January, the Flight Data Processing System had gone down and air traffic controllers had taken over, guiding flights manually. “We are handling close to 750 flights at IGI Airport every day and definitely need a more reliable system,” the article quoted an official as saying.

View Larger Map

(In the map, if you click alternately on “Satellite” and “Terrain” it’s clear that the airport occupies the whole of a hilltop. Once the plane missed the runway, the only place to go was down into the valley.)

The Court of Inquiry has found the reason: The pilot was sleepy and disoriented. He responded incorrectly to the situation. They think that if he’d jammed on his emergency brakes instead of trying to take off again, the plane would have been saved.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION AND OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES

In the US, authorities are beginning to recognize the dangers of sleep deprivation. Drowsy driving has been compared with drunk driving, and has caused fatal accidents. A 1999 study showed how driving ability deteriorated in 12 subjects after sleep deprivation. The same year, Stanford University researchers released a note saying, “ In a test of reaction times, people who were tired because of disrupted sleep performed about as poorly as subjects who were legally drunk.” A NASA article cites the National Transportation Safety Board as saying, about fatigue and pilot error, that sleepy crews “made more errors overall, and significantly more procedural and tactical decision errors.”

A study in 2007 had 6 subjects use a driving simulator; without sleep, their eye-movements didn’t even track with their steering.

Despite this, in the US there are still jobs where people are required to keep hours that almost ensure they’ll be sleep-deprived. Often those are the very jobs where other people’s lives are at risk: truckers; doctors; emergency responders.

In India, I wonder, Is the issue even on the radar or in the public consciousness?

———————————————————–

From Gopalan Ganesh:

Two or three years ago, at the invitation of our IIMA classmates Pyare Lal and R.Subramaniam (“RS”), I spent a couple of days at the N.L. Dalmia Institute campus at Mira Road.

I was staying with relatives in Santa Cruz West. Usually, I took an auto-rickshaw to Bandra station, then went to platform #4 for the Fast Train to Virar, and got off at Mira Road. Going against the traffic both ways, it was reasonably smooth, both ways, and I usually even got a place to sit. Pyare and RS had advised me to travel only First Class, given the crowds and pick pockets.

On this ill-fated day, I decided to go to Andheri station because in the journey towards Mira Road, Andheri came after Bandra. I thought, why not shorten my journey. What a stupid decision!

I went to platform #4 in Andheri, and got into the first train that showed up. This was my second (and bigger) mistake. It was a Borivali Local Train. I was in fact wondering why so many people got in with me, unlike the fast train to Virar.

People kept pouring in at every station from there on. When I’d gotten in at Andheri, I only had standing room and now the squeeze was on. I was  getting increasingly uncomfortable. By this time, I realized my mistake and was anticipating Borivali with great apprehension.

The train reached that madhouse soon enough, and there was this mad rush of commuters into the First Class compartment, like a swarm of bees. I was trying to get off, but instead got dragged right in and very nearly crushed in the stampede. The train, having reached its terminus,  started back toward Churchgate. I was getting the @#$% squeezed out of me.

I shouted out in my best Mumbai English+Hindi combination that I was a professor, and had to go to Mira Road for a lecture starting at 9 am, that I was new to Mumbai and had got onto the wrong train.

Enter my hero. This big burly guy who was on the footboard heard my pathetic
pleas,  and shouted to the rest of them to let me through to the footboard area. Once I made it there, he told me to be ready. He formed a physical arch at the next station allowing me to extrude through.

I literally danced for joy on the platform, before going to the correct platform and reaching Mira Road an hour or so later.  I must have looked like I was run over by a road roller, or I’d seen a ghost during the day time. Pyare Lal, RS and the Dalmia Institute students had a good laugh.

Mumbai commuters, given their daily hell, are very helpful and courteous.

The cabin crew pointed to a regulation that required at least six to be on duty if liquor was to be served. We’re not sure whether  hard drinks make for 20% more work; or if six crew members would be needed to restrain those who over-indulge and become belligerent… Anyway, in a cost-cutting move,  the plane had only five in the cabin crew that day.

Discussions ensued. The Captain, realizing that booze is an Important Customer Service issue (especially, one supposes, on a flight to Dubai where alcohol is restricted) offered to help out as the sixth cabin crew-member. Eventually, drinks were offered and peace prevailed.

Or not quite. The Air Corporation Employees Union, which covers the cabin crew, are annoyed that the captain pressured them to break the rules. They’re taking it up, according to MSN’s report, with Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association (ICPA), which covers the pilots; and are threatening to boycott this particular pilot.

**************

Less amusing is the tragic tale of the recent Air India crash and its aftermath. According to the NDTV report,  flight from Dubai to Mangalore, piloted by an experienced British pilot of Serbian origin, overshot the runway of Mangalore’s hilltop airport by 2000 feet, and crashed.  Of those on board,  eight survived; and 158 died.

I’m mentioning his national origin because ICPA thinks this is the issue. They have written to the Ministry about employing foreign pilots instead of Indian ones. They also think the management of Air India leaves something to be desired…

Meanwhile, an environmental group believes the fault lay with the airport, not the pilot. The Environmental Support Group fought to stop the building of the second runway right up to India’s Supreme Court, on the grounds that it did not comply with national or international standards since it would be surrounded by deep valleys on three sides and had no emergency landing area. It lost the case; the runway was built.

In the map above, if you click alternately on “Satellite” and “Terrain” it’s clear that the airport occupies the whole of a hilltop. Once the plane missed the runway, the only place to go was down into the valley.

According to a report in the Mumbai paper Mid-Day, it all started during the great volcanic flight disruption, when the Icelandic volcano spewed enough ash to halt or muddle air traffic across Europe for several days. In the process, an Air India flight bound for Canada via Frankfurt got diverted to Cairo.

The opportunity presented itself, the temptation was overwhelming. The crew went to see the pyramids.

I’ve seen the pyramids and they are awe-inspiring and mind-boggling in scale. (In the picture, the little patch below the plane’s left eye is actually a huge gateway.)  So I understand the feeling.  But…

But the plane with pilot and passengers waited for the sightseeing crew. Sixteen hours, according to one account; five according to another.

Air India admits the incident and promises “stern action”. One of these days, it’s going to find itself on Saturday Night Live.

In the ten years since, I doubt the article has become any less accurate – except that the speed of traffic in all major cities has slowed to a crawl during much of the day. (The picture below was taken in Delhi.)

I stand by my book’s recommendation – expats and visitors to India should not attempt to drive there. Hire a car with a driver instead, read the article, and be not daunted.

Keep Distance...

——–

DRIVING IN INDIA by Coen Jukens (2000?)

I visited Mumbai recently and agree with the observations about driving. For the benefit of every Tom, Dick and Harry visiting India and daring to drive on Indian roads, I am offering a few hints for survival. They are applicable to every place in India except Bihar, where life outside a vehicle is only marginally safer.

Indian road rules broadly operate within the domain of karma where you do your best and leave the results to your insurance company.

The hints are as follows:

Do we drive on the left or right of the road? The answer is “both”. Basically you start on the left of the road, unless it is occupied. In that case, go to the right, unless that is also occupied. Then proceed by occupying the next available gap, as in chess.

(The rest of the article is under the jump…)

1. Just trust your instincts, ascertain the direction, and proceed. Adherence to road rules leads to much misery and occasional fatality.

2. Most drivers don’t drive, but just aim their vehicles in the intended direction. Don’t you get discouraged or underestimate yourself. Except for a belief in reincarnation, the other drivers are not in any better position.

3. Don’t stop at pedestrian crossings just because some fool wants to cross the road. You may do so only if you enjoy being bumped in the back. Pedestrians have been strictly instructed to cross only when traffic is moving slowly or has come to a dead stop because some minister is in town. Still some idiot may try to wade across, but then, let us not talk ill of the dead.

4. Blowing your horn is not a sign of protest as in some countries. We horn to express joy, resentment, frustration, romance and bare lust (two brisk blasts) or just to mobilize a dozing cow in the middle of the bazaar.

5. Keep informative books in the glove compartment. You may read them during traffic jams, while awaiting the chief minister’s motorcade, or waiting for the rain waters to recede when over-ground traffic meets underground drainage.

6. Night driving on Indian roads can be an exhilarating experience (for those with the mental makeup of Genghis Khan). In a way, it is like playing Russian roulette, because you do not know who amongst the drivers is loaded. What looks like premature dawn on the horizon turns out to be a truck attempting a speed record. On encountering it, just pull partly into the field adjoining the road until the phenomenon passes. Our roads do not have shoulders, but occasional boulders. Do not blink your lights expecting reciprocation. The only dim thing in the truck is the driver and the peg of illicit arrack he has had at the last stop; his total cerebral functions add up to little more than a naught. Truck drivers are the James Bonds of India and are licensed to kill. Often you may encounter a single powerful beam of light about six feet above the ground. This is not a super motorbike, but a truck approaching you with a single light on, usually the left one. It could be the right one, but never get too close to investigate. You may prove your point posthumously. Of course, all this occurs at night, on the trunk roads.

During the daytime, trucks are more visible, except that the drivers will never show any signal. (And you must watch for the absent signals; they are a greater threat.) Only, you will often observe that the cleaner that sits next to the driver will project his hand and wave hysterically. This is definitely not to be construed as a signal for a left turn. The waving is just an expression of physical relief on a hot day.

Occasionally you might see what looks like an UFO with blinking colored lights and weird sounds emanating from within. This is an illuminated bus, full of happy pilgrims singing bhajans. These pilgrim buses go at breakneck speed, seeking contact with the Almighty, often meeting with success.

Unique to Indian traffic:

Auto Rickshaw (Baby Taxi)
[That would be the yellow-top in the picture above]

The result of a collision between a rickshaw and an automobile, this three-wheeled vehicle works on an external combustion engine that runs on a mixture of kerosene oil and creosote. This triangular vehicle carries iron rods, gas cylinders or passengers three times its weight and dimension, at an unspecified fare.

After careful geometric calculations, children are folded and packed into these auto rickshaws until some children in the periphery are not in contact with the vehicle at all. Then their school bags are pushed into the microscopic gaps all round so those minor collisions with other vehicles on the road cause no permanent damage. Of course, the peripheral children are charged half the fare and also learn Newton’s laws of motion en route to school. Auto-rickshaw drivers follow the road rules depicted in the film Ben Hur and are licensed to irritate.

Mopeds
The moped looks like an oil tin on wheels and makes noise like an electric shaver. It runs 30 miles on a teaspoon of petrol and travels at break-bottom speed. As the sides of the road are too rough for a ride, the moped drivers tend to drive in the middle of the road; they would rather drive under heavier vehicles instead of around them and are often “mopped” off the tarmac.

Leaning Tower of Passes
Most bus passengers are given free passes and during rush hours, there is absolute mayhem (hell). There are passengers hanging off other passengers, who in turn hang off the railings and the overloaded bus leans dangerously, defying laws of gravity but obeying laws of surface tension. As drivers get paid for overload (so many Rupees per kg of passenger), no questions are ever asked. Steer clear of these buses by a width of three passengers.

One-way Street
These boards are put up by traffic people to add jest in their otherwise drab lives. Don’t stick to the literal meaning and proceed in one direction. In metaphysical terms, it means that you cannot proceed in two directions at once. So drive as you like, in reverse throughout, if you are the fussy type.

Lest I sound hypercritical, I must add a positive point also.

Rash and fast driving in residential areas has been prevented by providing a “speed breaker”; two for each house. This mound, incidentally, covers the water and drainage pipes for that residence and is left un-tarred for easy identification by the corporation authorities, should they want to recover the pipe for year-end accounting.

If, after all this, you still want to drive in India, have your lessons between 8 pm and 11 am – when the police have gone home. The citizen is then free to enjoy the ‘FREEDOM OF SPEED’ enshrined in our constitution.

Having said all this, isn’t it true that the accident rate and related deaths are less in India compared to US or other countries ?

by Coen Jukens