By Vidyadhar Date*
I read Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s entire speech at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo in New Delhi yesterday on a government site, and it should have us worried: congestion on our roads is going to get worse.
This is not a matter of being pro or anti Modi and even ordinary Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers should worry about this.
Mobility, by international standards, means mobility for all, especially with public transport. The speech makes out as if only cars and car users matter, common people do not matter one bit. There is not even a single reference to public transport in his entire speech – no mention of buses, bicycles, walking, railways…nothing! The Prime Minister celebrates the growth of the automobile industry. But he makes no mention of the bus industry at all.
This is typical of the Republican Party model in the U.S., it is obsessed with the auto industry, and private motor car use, and sees public transport, buses or trams as a sign of communism.
The U.S. was not like this. The invasion of the car industry spoilt it all. Detroit, the capital of the motor car industry, like many other cities in the U.S., in its early days had an excellent public transport system, the tram or as they say in the U.S. streetcar system, and all of it was run by a monopoly known as the Detroit United Railway. In short, one could get anywhere on the D.U.R. or one of its subsidiaries – trains, that were fast and frequent. Today, a transit line is considered frequent if a bus or streetcar comes every 10 minutes or less; in the early 20th century, this was considered a bare minimum level of service in urban areas and even in inner-ring suburbs. Cars were still expensive toys for the rich. Buses hadn’t been invented yet. Horses were slow, and, of course, one had to feed and water them. This gave the D.U.R. a monopoly over transport, and with this monopoly came a tremendous amount of power.
Today, we consider mass transit to be a public service, but in the early 20th century that was not the case and mass transit could easily make money.
It is the evil competition, the evil neglect that kills a good public transport system. The car lobby ensures with its money power that cities do not have a good public transport network. Make no mistake about it. Even if we have a thriving motor car industry, buses are what we need in large numbers.
In this context, Modi’s speech, the U.S. Republican Party, and the history of Detroit a century ago, all appear interrelated. Many don’t know of the radical history of the United States. Wikipedia lists over 100 incidents of drivers ramming protesters during the 2020 George Floyd protests alone. Motivated by partisanship, politics, and a complete disregard for public health and welfare, perhaps the most insidious form of normalizing vehicular sociopathy was promoted in 2021 by Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa, who “passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets.
Denial of public transport is a direct attack on the working people, reducing their access to livelihood. and then we hear of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas!
*Senior journalist. The views expressed are personal.
