It is a matter of grave concern that large number of people are dying on Indian roads.
The number has risen to the monstrous figure of 1.39 lakh in 2012, as per National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data — thus a staggering number of 382 people lost their lives daily. This does not include those who died in Rail mishaps. The deaths on roads account for more than 37 per cent of the total unnatural deaths in the country, and this has increased by more than 51 per cent as compared to 2002.
Unfortunately, it is not only a data — it is the story of immeasurable pain and extreme gloominess of every single affected individual and/or family. This human angle alone should shake the conscience of the nation. So hundreds of thousands of families bereave for the loss of their near and dear ones, many of the deceased being the bread-winners — thus heightening the emotional trauma with hard daily economic reality. And, this also does not include the people who are routinely injured sending their medical expenses sky-rocketing, and more sadly those who are maimed and left jobless due to serious debilitating injuries. The economic cost of this human tragedy to the country must definitely be equally high. The socio-economic disaster of such gigantic proportion has neither downed on public psyche nor the state policy.
It is clear that the Indian roads are a major killer and perhaps one of the worst in the world. The experts must have their detailed explanations about the causes of this malaise, including the burgeoning number of vehicles and the resultant traffic hazard, poor road engineering, lack of road discipline, inadequacy of trauma care, especially the loss of the first golden hour after the accident, and poor enforcement of road regulations etc. But the explanations are known and will not do any good. The need is to act. We must get down to preparing a comprehensive all-India plan to reverse this trend. It should be a well researched implementable time-bound scheme with the active participation of all state agencies and other stakeholders. Trucks and buses are the major killers, and the scooterists and pedestrians the major victims. Hence roping in and sensitising the State Transport Authorities, Road Transport Corporations, Traffic Police establishments, private transporters, many of who operate through cartels, for concerted efforts would be crucial. So is the need to build public awareness for following road safety norms.
The motorists are grossly undisciplined is known to us for long. But what serious effort has been made to bring some order among them, is clearly not known. One huge problem is the extremely lax system of granting driving licence to persons who neither know driving nor have any acquaintance with traffic rules — this is in sharp contrast to the global standards. We also know why this happens. But the issue is that at some point in life one takes a lesson, and the time has come for the country to take a serious call now. If we can make this one fundamental change i.e., make licensing process stringent and corruption-free, many of our precious lives will be saved.
State intervention is necessary for efficiency of public transport systems and responsible behaviour of their employees as of core importance. This is an area which is limited in number and size, and hence may be easily corrected with a right mix of strong measures and exhortations and rewards to the public employees for promoting safety on roads. The truckers are generally among the rowdiest elements on the road. Controlling them is of great importance.
The lack of effectiveness in checking road accidents may be illustrated by pointing out to large number of deaths in metros and towns and cities. For argument’s sake, let us assume that because of lack of infrastructure and man power etc, our highways cannot be managed and hence traffic accidents in such far and wide area are not really controllable. The question is then why we cannot enforce discipline in the limited areas of towns and cities. This weak enforcement has no excuse except glaring inefficiency and massive corruption among the traffic and transport officials. And that happens because of the perceived and real ‘low cost’ to inefficiency, negligence, dereliction of duty and outright corruption among public officials of all hue, coupled with aggressive and drunken driving by bus and lorry drivers. The cost to misdemeanour must rise in our country — our liberal democracy is grossly abused to the detriment of quality and dignity of human life.
India’s march to humanism, modernism, equitable economic growth and desire to be counted among the developed countries of the world are seriously hampered by many societal and administrative ills. This is one area that is also crying for immediate correction.