New Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey’s experiment with clamping rather than towing brings into focus the vital but much-neglected traffic police. On one side is a 4,000-strong force and on the other is a city with 38 lakh vehicles – India’s most car-congested city with 500 cars per km. Worse, half the roads are blocked for some infrastructure work or the other. However, the traffic cops are not making life easier for themselves by taking a blinkered view of the situation. Policing on the ground is sloppy and the bosses have an ostrich-like attitude to the real issues. Matters are further complicated by the way some traffic cops conduct themselves. This gives the traffic police, the entire police force and the city a bad name. Road rage and the boorish behavior of the rich are not to be excused though.
Over the years, the image of the Mumbai traffic cop has taken a beating. Commissioner Pandey was flooded with complaints about the traffic police when he gave out his phone number and email asking for suggestions from the public. Now, this could have been done by the traffic police chief himself but seeking a dialogue with the public is not part of police culture. Up to the eighties, the smartest sub-inspectors, fluent in English, were posted in the traffic branch. Friendly but firm, tough-talking as well as tactful, they were the public face of the Mumbai Police.
Even in those days, the image of the traffic havildar was dismal. Today it will lead to a furore but one of Shiamak Davar’s dance numbers in the popular revue, Bottoms Up, had a chorus line dressed like traffic havildars, dancing to ‘Hafta! Nikalo hafta...’. The havildars have done themselves no good. Not content with fleecing offenders at traffic signals, they jump out of bushes, lie in wait at confusing turns, like a spider in its web, and are no better than highwaymen on the highways. They don’t spare their own; Mumbai’s whistle-blower cop Sunil Toke was victimised by his colleagues as well as his seniors after he released a bribe rate card of the traffic police. The `hafta’ to allow overloading by trucks was Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000.
On the flip side, traffic cops are the first to help accident victims. In times of flooding, they are the only ones manning the streets, well past midnight. They are exposed directly to toxic exhaust fumes. No one cares for these foot soldiers. Cops at busy junctions should get oxygen cylinders to clear their lungs and masseurs for their tired feet. Their bosses, at least in Mumbai, are more interested in gobbling up land meant for housing constables and in facilitating skyscrapers by reducing the road width or space for a bus depot. Much of the hostility faced by traffic cops have little to do with them; it is a result of bad planning, or rather lack of planning, by their seniors who rarely stir out of their air-conditioned cabins.
Mumbai’s already narrow roads are halved due to construction for metro lines. Yet, parking is tolerated on them, resulting in arterial roads being reduced to just one lane even in peak hours. Highways too have bottlenecks; the five-km stretch from Borivali to Kandivali on the Western Express Highway takes half an hour to traverse in the afternoon! Are the CCTV cameras at such spots being monitored?
Traffic jams at toll nakas often stretch up to half a km or beyond. At such times, the rulebook says that vehicles should be allowed to pass without paying the toll so that the jam is cleared. This rule is rarely enforced. Trucks have a free pass. They don’t need tail-lights, they can tilt with weight, they can park anywhere, they can spew black smoke, they can even ply during peak hours. Not many know of the rule that trucks, buses and heavy vehicles must keep to the left, because it is never enforced.
The larger issue though is how to decongest the roads by taking private cars off the roads. This can happen only with improved public transport and policies to discourage cars in busy places by imposing a congestion tax, encouraging car-pooling, dedicated bus lanes (BRTS), etc. Maybe congested areas with narrow lanes, such as Kalbadevi, can be made traffic-free zones.
The reality is that public transport is nobody’s baby. Yes, but from time to time, mantris and babus visit choice cities around the world to study public transport and traffic management systems. The famous BEST bus service of Mumbai was being throttled until citizens led by Vidyadhar Date – a former assistant editor with the Times of India – rallied public opinion to rescue it.
No thought has been given to parking at hospitals, courts, tourist places, etc., whereas malls and multiplexes never seem to run out of parking. Even Mumbai’s business districts; Nariman Point, BKC, and Mindspace lack adequate parking.
Coming back to the central issue: why is our traffic police in the Stone Age? Where are all the funds for the Smart City project going? Cameras are installed with great fanfare but are soon rendered useless because the vendors are not paid. And, what is the status of Mumbai’s Intelligent Traffic Management System sanctioned by the Fadnavis government last year at a cost of Rs 900 crore?
Rising incidents of road rage, often targeting traffic cops, have led to cities across India looking for solutions. The solutions are staring them in the face. Kanpur plans to streamline parking in marketplaces, Amritsar is remodeling 22 junctions and it has dawned on Indore that traffic jams are due to parking in public places and wrong-side driving.
Motorists too need to respect the rules and observe etiquette. Why complain when the new normal is lane cutting, driving on the wrong side, riding two-wheelers on pavements, curb parking, needless honking, and stopping on the zebra crossing.
Traffic congestion in cities is an age-old problem. Those in charge have to come up with solutions. Ancient Rome had such severe jams that Julius Caesar himself had to devise a traffic plan.
