Roadside Dillema

This time around the drive to Aligarh had not been that bumpy and bone-rattling as it always invariably used to be, till only a year back. We started from Janakpuri around 6.00A.M., took N.H.24, past Indirapuram, turned right on to the G.T. Road, negotiated crowded market places at Dadari and Sikandrabad, skirted around Bulandshahr, Khurja and reached our destination in Aliigarh in good time-within 4 hours which included some time spent eating out breakfast by the canal bank at Bulandshahr. Earlier on similar errands, our romance with the U.P. Roads had never been so good and that made us complacent on our return journey back to Delhi a few days later.

The return journey was timed at 1.30P.M., ample by any reckoning, to be back to home by 5.30 P.M. Further, to safe on time and fuel, at Sikandrabad, we turned left taking the Greater Noida road (and that proved our undoing), drove through the busy vegetable market of the town with some difficulty , as by then, it had become quite crowded. Little did we think that the testing times await us only a few Kms. away.

The Sikandrabad level-crossing gate was closed and there it was: a mother of all traffic jams; or so we thought. There we remained stuck helplessly- for what then appeared to be ages; at that chaotic point, foaming and fuming, cursing our luck, and other fellow drivers who were maneuvering to go ahead of us in that melee. They generously returned our compliments. Fortunately for us, the altercations did not translate into full-blown road-rage. We didn’t have a twig to hit back the enemy, had he decided to attack us. We were, however, told that there was nothing unique about the traffic jam ( as also the altercations) at this point; it happens about five to eight times a day. We had to keep the engine running all the time, inching forward at the slightest indication of opening. In the meanwhile, the level-crossing gates, alternatively opened and closed at least two times before we could get the opportunity to cross over the rail-lines, and we heaved a sigh of relief.

There could be thousands of such level-crossings around the country, and if at every crossing the common citizens are confronted with the similar type of nightmarish experience four or five times a day, then where are we heading to? The tale of our miseries, however, was not to end here.

A few kilometers on, crossing a bridge over a canal, the road forks: one stretch going to Palwal to join N.H-2 there and the other going to Delhi via Greater Noida and Noida. The traffic transporting goods and people between the towns of the area, their hinterland and beyond merges at this god-forsaken place. Here again we got stuck, and waited interminably, braving all sorts of jam related hazards, for more than two hours. By that time it was dark also. In the headlights of the moaning vehicles, on those two narrow winding roads-one leading to Palwal and the other to Greater Noida- we could see endless line of all manner of passenger and commercial vehicles: buses, vans, tractors with trolleys attached, overloaded trucks, long vehicles, huge container platforms, tempos with passengers precariously hanging out from their open side-doors and, of course, cars with running engines all belching volumes of carbon-di-oxide in the atmosphere. The noise of blowing horns mingled with that of running engines and screaming drivers made for a picture perfect scene of chaos. I had been on the wheel all the time. Reaching home at about 9.00P.M., I had fever and was laid-up for a fortnight. By the time recovered, I had already lost 12 workings days plus three holidays besides a few hundred rupees on medicines and footing the Doctor’s bill .

I am not a pessimist, but it sets me thinking. What price the society has been paying since long in terms of lost man-hours, and economic and environmental costs for this lop-sided development where, in a predominantly agricultural country, the agricultural sector registers the GDP growth not even a quarter that of the rest of other sectors; infra-structure is not strengthened before embarking upon huge industrial projects, and the national resources are wasted in producing luxury goods to cater the creature comforts of the elite few of the society? Diabolic materialism and crass consumerism are robbing people of quality life and tension-free living.

An army of handsomely paid writers write reams eulogizing this growth where the poor and the middle-class India is forced to subsidize its rich and powerful to become still more rich and powerful. With loads of trepidation, I hear car manufacturers, year after each year, reporting 20 to 35% increase over the preceding year in production of their various models. Even presuming that 30% of their product is exported, it leaves us with suffocating number of cars to choke beyond capacity, our already saturated roads. Even at a modest guesstimate, if there are only one thousand Secundrabad ,Dadri type choke-points in the entire country, through which at an average 1500 passenger vehicles with average passenger load of ten passengers pass through, each losing an hour in traffic jams occurring with a frequency of four times a day, the colossal loss in terms of man-hours only will be worked out in the region of several lakhs a day. Add to it the fuel cost of thousands of idling engines on all these choke points throughout the country and hazards of atmospheric pollution caused thereby and you get a rough picture of mindless waste of manpower, money and material which could have easily avoided had they cared to develop and strengthen the infra-structure before executing industrial projects. The government’s ill-planned development policies and activities have been causing huge sufferings to the common man, besides entailing colossal waste of scarce national resources and manpower. When should we expect the government to abandon this “putting the cart before the horse” policy and rearranged the priorities?”

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI