Given the ad hoc and knee-jerk policy response of the Delhi government to the ongoing Blueline bus mess, Delhi commuters should not expect relief from their current difficulties for the foreseeable future. The latest in a string of ostensible policy announcements is that pedestrians will be taken to task and fined for jaywalking, as this results in avoidable accidents! Delhi will be Singapore! This will only give more power to an ill-trained police force to harrass even the poor pedestrian. We have, as it were, vowed never to learn from our experience. Imagine fining jaywalkers when?sidewalks either don?t exist or have been covered with encroachments; traffic signals regularly go on the blink; pedestrian subways or overpasses are constructed at a significant distance from where they should be and are so poorly maintained that it is a major risk to use them.
The public transport situation in Delhi and the official response to it are typical of the problems with delivery of public goods and services in our large cities. The situation is broadly characterised by?almost complete lack of long-term planning; presence of strong vested interests that rules out sensible policymaking and politicises even the most routine issue; a tendency to skirt the main issues since these require sustained attention and long-term solutions; an assumption that passing laws achieves the desired objectives; and not enough attention to the required personnel training or institutional capacity building for better implementation. Let me take the example of Blueline bus services and the Delhi public road transport system to illustrate these issues.
Nearly 20 years ago, the issue of privatisation of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) was raised as an answer to the deteriorating public transport situation in the city. The most practical solution? to hand over public road transport to a few large private corporations who would each manage and run a fleet of buses under government regulation and in competitive conditions?was rejected. Instead, Delhi adopted a system of licensing and hiring individually-owned buses to supplement DTC capacity. This expectedly provided a risk-free investment option to all those who were generating accountable and unaccounted incomes from the sale of land, real estate, broking and other intermediary services and forms of rent seeking. One commonly hears that most of these buses are owned by petty government officials and members of the police force, and this will ensure that they are never taken off the roads.
Rather than go after those generating these incomes and getting them to pay their rightful taxes, the government, by adopting the system of hiring these individually-owned buses, had in one stroke provided the simplest modality for investing all this unaccounted wealth in an income-generating activity. Being individual owners, with no economies of scale, scope or management to derive higher returns, these bus operators have relied upon low wages to drivers, overcrowding, rash driving (to maximise passenger pick-ups and round-trips) and lowest possible maintenance costs, to generate profits. The reasons for the high accident rate, low quality level of service and the mockery that?s made of rules and regulations are all inherent in the very system that has been adopted. And yet, the government?s only remedial measures have involved changing the name of the services from Greenline to Redline and then to Blueline, periodic checks every time loss of life in road accidents erupts in public outcry, and threats of punishment to the actual owners without ever implementing them. The owners seem to know that the whole thing will pass in due time and status quo will return once the media loses interest in the tragedy and the public demands more buses.
Our Leftist and Socialist friends opportunistically keep silent on all this mayhem and suffering to the common man. But they oppose corporatisation, which is perhaps the only long-term and rational way to bring sanity to Delhi roads. They will also oppose the DTC?s privatisation when it is beyond doubt that there are huge leakages that make it one of the most uneconomical transport corporations in existence and when the political will and administrative capability required to make DTC drivers behave like their London and Singapore counterparts just does not exist.
It is time that we look at all possible options within a long-term framework, undertake a comprehensive exercise to forecast Delhi?s public transport needs in the coming decade, and come up with the multi-modal supply plan to meet these needs. This should replace the practice of undertaking urban development on the basis of forthcoming international events. Unfortunately, the present situation is likely to persist because the governance system seems to work either in response to public outcry or emergencies. Voices raised in support of more effective planning and delivery of public services while minimising costs and maximising consumer welfare are increasingly irrelevant in a situation where other ?practical? factors, often unethical and unsupportable, determine policy decisions at all levels.
?The author is director and chief executive, Icrier. Email: rkumar@icrier.res.in