Road Deaths: The Way of the Future

I have not been able to keep up with the news digests. Each day I collect articles from the online Hindi newspapers to find out what is going on in the Braj area. These get posted on the Prema Prayojan blog.

Generally, I try to post articles that deal with religious news or are connected directly to temples or religious events, and articles about the environment or development issues. The weather has been of interest lately, and I consider that an environmental issue. Occasionally there are other articles that just catch my eye, but that is the primary focus. The big problem, of course, is that we have no one contributing news directly, no intrepid reporters sitting in on Nagar Palika meetings or following up on the paper thin stories the broadsheets provide.

One thing I have generally not been posting is reports of petty crime in the Braj area, though some mentions are inevitable, like today's story of a group of thieves who stole the bells from a temple and were caught. Dowry or bride murders have been reported in the papers with more frequency than anyone would desire.

There have been numerous suicides, many by young women in domestic difficulty, including a gruesome incident two or three days back where two women put their heads on the train tracks and were decapitated. But farmers, people losing their jobs, students who failed their exams, have all committed suicide in the past few weeks. And then there are the drownings in the Yamuna, often quite heart-rending, like the bride whose brother drowned at Vishram Ghat on the day of her wedding.

And then there are the car accidents. The other day, a woman laborer in Govardhan, working on rebuilding the walls to an ashram that had been razed in the recent demolitions, was run over by a tractor on the Parikrama Marg. I immediately got a frisson of premonition: Perhaps people will come to do Parikrama as a way of committing holy suicide, like those who used to throw themselves under the wheels of Lord Jagannath's chariot.

There is an incredible number of road deaths in Mathura district. I have not been keeping count, but I would estimate an average of two or three are reported each day. That would make an incredible 700-1000 road deaths per year in this district, which has an estimated population of two million.

UP Chief Minister Sushri Mayawati's "Vrindavan Project" seems an almost certain recipe for much more of this when the Parikrama Marg becomes home to ever more speeding vehicles. The roads are intended to normalize traffic in a transformed world based on the car culture, but it may take generations before people learn proper road etiquette on the one hand, and the tractors, camel, buffalo and donkey-driven carts, bicycles and, yes, people on foot, are taken off them on the other.

Can you import LA to the land of the holy cow? And why would you want to?

Over the past twenty years, India has seen an incredible growth in the number of cars and, consequently, in the number of accidents. Last year, in its first ever Global Status Report on Road Safety, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that India has more traffic fatalities every year than any other country in the world (BBC, Times of India).

In 2006, more than 100,000 people were killed on India’s roads, and an estimated 2,000,000 were seriously injured. Another 8-9 million minor injuries. A year later, that figure had increased to a stupendous 114,000 deaths! However, real numbers could be even higher, since many accidents are not even reported, and many of those injured may die a few hours or days after the accident. Only in a country where life is so cheap could such a horrendous slaughter be tolerated.

And India's growing economy means that there has been a surge in demand for new cars. Since 1991, when economic liberalization was introduced, automobile production has soared. 100,000 new cars come onto the roads in India each month, but in fact, cars only make up 10% of the vehicles on the road. Two-wheelers make up more than 70%, and their drivers suffer disproportionately in accidents.

The number of drivers in India is expected to reach 11 in 1,000 this year - a doubling since 2000 when 0.5% of Indians had a car. And 10% of homes now have some kind of two-wheeler. Even so, in absolute numbers, the proportion of drivers to total population is still very small. India, in case anyone has forgotten, is a very densely populated country. Cars and roads take a lot of space in a land that is already very crowded. How much of such economic development can it take?

Many reasons are given for the high number of fatalities: one is that people just don't know the rules of the road. Another is the inadequacy of the roads, which are shared by many slower-moving vehicles. The one cited most often is speed. The greater the speed, the more chance for accidents, the more chance for fatalities.

One person, the mother of a teenage girl, told me of a nice, well-mannered young man who visited her home in Vrindavan. He had just gotten a two-wheeler and he confessed, "Once I start moving, I just want to go as fast as I can! And woe to anyone who stands in my way!"

Road anxiety is so high in India, it is palpable. Traffic jams are so full of tension as each vehicle competes for every centimeter of available asphalt. No one dares let anyone pass for fear of being left stranded and still for an extra few minutes. There is no such thing as fixed lanes on any road, and two-wheelers take even the narrowest space between vehicles as an open invitation to attempt passing. 

It used to be somewhat amusing and picturesque to see bearded sadhus covered in ash and tilak at the wheel of a Maruti or on an Honda Hero. But the psychology of horsepower of affects even them. They may love silence in their morning meditations, but behind the wheel, they are just as likely to honk heavily at any poor pilgrim who encroaches on their few square meters of roadway.

The point is that roads themselves, inasmuch as they permit more speed and aggression, because they habituate drivers to speed in a way that makes them even more impatient and aggressive when they find themselves in the narrow streets of a medieval town like Vrindavan, are unlikely to reduce the number of fatalities. Indeed, they will likely increase them.

Vrindavan was designed, if it can be called that, for a pedestrian culture. It grew around saints' and pilgrims' desire to walk in the soft holy dust of Vrindavan parikrama marga, to walk across the sands to the Yamuna to bathe, to walk from one temple to another in quiet contemplation and devotion.

The car promotes the tourist culture of speedy get in-get out. A quick, mindless fix of see-what-is-there-OK-seen that-done that. An infrastructure that is based on this mentality may work in an industrial town, or even some kinds of tourist towns. But in general this is an incredible destructive approach to development. Even Agra, the main tourist magnet in North India, is struggling with keeping a balance between tourism and the natural rhythms of a livable life for the local people--what to speak of a town like Vrindavan, whose very product (if we can call it that) is peace and quiet!

I fear that it is too late to stop this madness in Vrindavan. By making the pilgrim-choked Parikrama Marga the main traffic bypass connecting the Delhi-Agra highway to the new Yamuna Expressway, along with all the other ills that it will bring--and they are numerous--a spike in the number of traffic fatalities is also inevitable.

And, of course, those whose pockets are being lined with profits will sing the glories of economic development and progress and barely pay any lip service to the thousands who will die, nor recognize that they have blood on their hands.

Construction goes on on the bridge at Keshi Ghat. 

A sandbar is being built to facilitate construction at the west end of Keshi Ghat. 

Photo taken June 8, 2010.