Reflections: An odd flash in the pan

Arvind Kejriwal’s odd-even number experiment recalls the time in 1970 when Indira Gandhi took it into her head to ride from Safdarjung Road to Parliament House in a pony trap borrowed from Rashtrapati Bhavan. It wasn’t a “gimmick” she swore, self-consciously leafing through a file while the carriage trotted along. It was to save fuel. The country wouldn’t survive without austerity.

Atal Behari Vajpayee was even more flamboyantly austere the next day. He trundled along to the Lok Sabha in a bullock cart. Unlike the Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee had no coachman: flicking a whip and clicking his tongue, he himself drove the pair of bullocks with a towel wrapped round his head. The Swatantra Party’s irrepressible and inimitable Piloo Mody upstaged them both. Readers might remember, Mody was a large man.

So large, in fact, that the story goes his father, Sir Homi Mody, once sent him for a job to the British governor of the United Provinces (today’s Uttar Pradesh) with a note saying, “As you will see, he is a block of the old chip!” It wasn’t inappropriate, therefore, for Mody to lumber to Parliament perched on an elephant, looking down on the world from the lofty howdah.

All three modes of carriage made headline news, as did the capital’s recent 15-day ordeal. But just as the pony trap, bullock cart and elephant didn’t help to conserve petrol, it’s doubtful if the Delhi administration’s novel experiment brought down the pollution level. Despite the claim by the Aam Aadmi Party transport minister, Gopal Rai, of a 20-25 per cent drop in the pollution level, several meters showed it had actually gone up. But

Mr Kejriwal’s innovation need not be blamed. The weather isn’t subject to chief ministerial commands, and it was probably one of those winter spells when a blanket of fog and smog smothers the city, preventing aeroplanes from landing or taking off. More seriously, the Centre for Science and Environment estimates Delhi’s filthy air kills up to 30,000 men, women and children every year.
This is not to deny the chief minister credit for being more conscious of the peril than most politicians and trying to respond to it with positive measures.

Awareness of the crisis explained media support and the willingness of the Central authorities and the Delhi Police — whom Mr Kejriwal singled out for mention — to help the experiment succeed. Even the Delhi high court rejected a public interest litigation questioning the scheme.

“For the first time, the middle class has been held accountable and done their bit towards damage control,” was the verdict of Harsh Mander, the environmentalist. The chief minister must have derived wry pleasure from the compliment by Shazia Ilmi, who abandoned the Aam Aadmi Party for the Bharatiya Janata Party that “the city comes together for a good movement regardless of which party one belongs to.”

That may have prompted Mr Kejriwal’s own “Delhiites are great, very cooperative” remark. But the odd-even scheme seems to have been too hurriedly conceived and announced. That was also the problem with Indira Gandhi’s horse carriage. She may have saved on fuel but her security car guzzled even more petrol than usual by driving in low gear to keep pace.
The odd-even scheme may have kept a million cars off the roads, and persuaded judges and diplomats to either walk or share cars.

But Mr Kejriwal was hardly entitled to boast of repeating the Singapore miracle. What we witnessed was a flash in the pan whose novelty captured the imagination. What we need, not only in Delhi but also in Mumbai and Kolkata, is a permanent system to ensure far less atmospheric pollution. One can see the stars in China’s Kunming. The sky over Singapore is blue and the air is clean. Why not in Delhi?

Although even Singapore knows failures, some of the measures it has implemented are worth considering here. The certificate of entitlement (COE) needed to buy a car can cost more than the vehicle and is believed to have persuaded many Singaporeans against acquiring a second or third car. The “park and ride” scheme, urging people to leave their cars at Metro stations and take the underground instead has probably been less successful. But weekend car licences have become popular.

Vehicles automatically record the additional surcharge for driving in the central business district or CBD. Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) ensures that a dedicated short-range radio communication system deducts charges from smart cards inserted in vehicles each time they pass a pricing point when the system is in operation. I am told this pay-when-you-use principle makes motorists more aware of the true cost of driving and optimises road usage.

Of course, none of this would have been effective without first-class public transport and immaculate maintenance of all vehicles. A third essential is honesty. Even if Singaporeans are not inherently more honest than others, the impartial enforcement of strict laws keeps them on the straight and narrow. One must admit with regret that none of these conditions operate in India.

Also, four-wheelers apparently account for less than 10 per cent of the pollution in our cities. Dust is said to be the biggest culprit. The theatrical Swachch Bharat campaign hasn’t even tried to make lakhs of municipal sweepers do the job for which they are paid. Illegal and unregulated construction, small industries, burning agricultural waste, and cooking fires are other causes of pollution. It would be too much to expect one man to tackle such deep-seated multifarious abuses.

But Mr Kejriwal can make a beginning by putting many more buses on the road to supplement the Metro. No city can expect to improve its quality of life without cheap and efficient public transport.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author