Maximum City - an urban nightmare

Mondays in Mumbai

Annoying horns, crackling firecrackers, the annoying digging noise of a digger somewhere, dust flying all over the place. Seems like a scene straight out of a day in Mumbai? Yes. What happens when you try to fill a water balloon and keep pouring water in beyond what the balloon can carry? That is exactly what is happening to Mumbai. Maximum city is bursting at its seams. Despite being a Mumbaiphile, despite how much it hurts me to write this piece, it is the truth!

To keep up with the urbanization spree, the infrastructure needs to grow. So everyone needs bigger roads and more buildings. And now, India is a growth story with Mumbai as one of its central characters. So, people are getting more affluent. As the standard of living increases, people grow aware of heretofore unknown entities like status symbols and so on. So, in a new phenomenon that is gripping Mumbai, people buy 4 cars per household! 2 small cars, and 2 SUVs, all for a family of maybe 4! Given the affluence, people hire a driver for a small sum a month and absolve themselves of the sorrows of driving in Mumbai. The result - the ever burgeoning need for more flyovers and even bigger roads! As the number of rich people grows, room at the bottom and the middle of the pyramid is let up and more poor people migrate into the city. This puts a pressure on public transport, the buses and trains in Mumbai, which till date have been hailed as the best in India! But even these have a set capacity which cannot be overshot.

The result - the balloon bursts. Crowds have become unimaginably huge such that traveling by public transport is literally painful. Augmented crowds lead to discomfort and whole lot of rage in an already stressed out city! Fine, so one could choose to travel in his own vehicle. But what will you do when someone chooses to take his SUV through rush hour traffic? He probably wouldn't realize the agony he is causing by choking up an arterial road in peak traffic, since he is perhaps being driven! And everybody else on the road has to put up with the ordeal of having to traverse a 20 minute distance in 2 hours. Add to the mess the pain of incessant honking, which adds on to the noise and unbeknownst to us augments our stress levels. Another major problem is the noise pollution that people in houses need to bear. An arterial road goes past their apartment building and they have to bear the noise of vehicles, sirens and honks all day and all night. This is a slow poison which has the capacity to increase stress levels and cause a whole slew of physiological as well as psychological problems!

What can be done? Well thankfully, a lot. In terms of urbanization, Mumbai is not the pioneer, nor is India, for that matter. So we have loads of precedents to fall back on. So, for the public transport infrastructure, decidedly we need wider roads, although not at the expense of trees and mangroves. We need more trains and more buses, or even more double decker buses! As far as road congestion goes, we can adopt rationing on the basis of number plates, as has been done in Brazil, which has the world's worst traffic congestion record. Or even adopt a penalty system for vehicles with single occupancy during peak hours, as has been done in Singapore. Another idea could be imposition of a prohibitively high tax on the third vehicle entering a household - a modification of the high purchase tax regime of Hong Kong. And as for the noise, well, putting up sound barriers or noise absorbent boards along arterial roads and expressways is a practice followed all over the developed world, to shield residential areas from road traffic noise. Surprisingly that mechanism is totally absent in India. Provincial parks and anointed green zones are essential in Mumbai, to check pollution levels as well.

All in all, strong and immediate steps need to be taken to preserve Mumbai's sanity. Or the very things that attract people to Mumbai and keep them there could turn to haunt them and perhaps even shoo them away!

Driving me crazy!!

There perhaps was something providential in my radio playing 'you drive me cra-e-a-e-zy' today. After a whole year of staying away from the pleasures of driving I made bold and got behind the wheel today to go and pay my respects to the Sea Link. And thankfully I did remember that the right-most pedal is the accelerator and that I need to hit the clutch to change my gearshift! But that knowledge was not enough for me, given my subequent tryst with Mumbai traffic, since I was stomping on the brake at least double the number of times I depressed the clutch and the accelerator put together!

A one year hiatus from driving has not dulled my driving skills. But it sure has blunted the memories of Mumbai traffic from my mind. People always tell me that traffic in Mumbai is a lot more disciplined than traffic in Delhi, or Chennai or any other city in India for that matter. And this comes just when I complain to my friends about the gross disregard shown to drivers by cabbies who run a drag race of their own from traffic signal to traffic signal! I can only imagine then, how traumatic life can be for those who need to drive in those other cities.

So, never mind the incessant wait in never-ending traffic snarls. Never mind the billowing smoke that emanates from the random truck whose gas pipe is so conveniently at the level of your open car window! As long as there is the radio, though I wish they'd play more music and talk lesser, and as long as you're ok to go on with closed windows, life is cool, well comparatively cooler! But hell breaks loose when an aspiring grand prix driver in a black and yellow cab suddenly decides that a red light turning to green is akin to the 'five lights illuminate and they go out, and the Mumbai Grand Prix is GO' signal!! Unfortunately people slowly getting back to grips with the pleasures of driving are caught in the fray, HEADLONG. And then start the observations.

People are always in a hurry. Especially those on two wheels. They go as far to the edge of the signal as they possibly can, and when the light turns green they race like as though in a MotoGP so that they can zip past the next signal and the next maybe before those lights turn red! And much as you're concerned about protecting your car, you worry more about their life, since a simple nudge by a car is perhaps enough to kill them! Ford was right - a car is indeed a lethal weapon, and given the spate of hit-and-runs, looks like the RTO is indeed handing over licenses to kill to our aspiring 18 year olds! So, silent prayers and occasional 'gadha kaheen ka' gaalis later, you move on and come to yet another signal. This one is red and you drum your steering wheel to the tune that's playing and 'Uff teri adaa' is interrupted by a loud honk. Why? the traffic signal has a second ago turned green and the car behind you thinks you have launch control a-la F1 cars! Alas, even a Ferrari F430 gives 0 to 100 kmph in 3.5 seconds!!! But who cares, what if you had fallen asleep behind the wheel? The guy behind you is doing you a favor here!!

And finally comes the car driver or cabbie who thinks he is on a motor bike. He zips and zooms as fast as he can and that is ok. You'd perhaps stay faaaaaaar away from those species. The issue is when he thinks he can push his car through a gap between a truck and your car and in the process leaves a dirty gash all over the side of your car. Never mind the spoilt appearance. The biggest problem is coming home and explaining that the source of the gash was errant driving by a lunatic on the road and not a need for speed from your side! But that argument seldom ever flies and you perhaps end grounded for a week!

But in terms of driving in Mumbai now, with the higher income levels and the increased proliferation of drivers who drive in gay abandon with scant regard towards the well-being of cars both under and around them, being grounded is perhaps the best thing that could happen to you!!!