Scene 1: The National Green Tribunal warned Delhi government for its casual approach on monitoring the entry of vehicles into the city via different points and directed to produce complete reports on it. The bench headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar issued an order which said “You were supposed to check three things (age, weight and extent of pollution caused by vehicles) at the different entry points to Delhi. Have you done that or not? Stop making jokes of our orders. You can’t just sit and tell us anything you want. We will impose the cost on your officers.”
When the officers were asked to give an explanation, the officers seemed clueless and were unable to produce any constructive argument. They just casually said, there are 13 entry points that are monitored and through which 83% of pollution is captured.
Scene 2: Delhi High Court said living in Delhi was like ‘living in a gas chamber’. Plans submitted by the Environment Ministry and the Delhi Government were ‘not comprehensive’, the judges said, because the Delhi government did not specify responsibilities and a timeline.
Scene 3: The Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, announced his government’s decision – The Odd-Even formula to tackle the rising air pollution menace in Delhi and also the traffic worries. The Odd-Even formula was a decision made in haste without giving a second thought for the actual repercussions of it. The Delhi government failed largely at understanding the need and knowhow of how and why people commute the way they do.
AAP decided to adopt the famous Beijing model of allowing private vehicles to commute on alternate days as per their registration numbers. Even numbered vehicles on one day and odd numbered vehicles on the next.
Congress leader Pramod Tiwari told while addressing the reporters “Kejriwal is an immature chief minister who doesn’t know the capacity of the Delhi’s public transport system. Without knowing that he is issuing the “Tughluq’ order which is not possible. This could be possible only in countries which have a strong public transport system. I think Kejriwal is very much frustrated and he is doing the same thing which Tughluq did to Delhi. Kejriwal has ruined the system and is just doing the cheap publicity stunt”.
Scene 4: Delhi Police commissioner BS Bassi said that the Aam Aadmi Party government did not consult it over the decision to restrict plying of private vehicles bearing odd and even registration numbers to alternate days. So the actual implementers remain uninformed.
Scene 5: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, after facing severe backlashes from public on various forums and social media, said “Odd-Even formula was an experiment to deal with the “emergency situation” in the city and could be discontinued if the people faced major problems.” What remains to be decided is whether the ‘thought through’ period should be 15 days or three months. We want to do it in 20 days. We have to talk to many agencies involved. In a day or two, we will come out with ads seeking suggestions from public. We will do as the people say.”
Kejriwal later told when asked about the detailed plan and implementation, “The government will prepare a detailed plan in the next few days. For this, the state has to form a committee comprising the transport commissioner and principal secretaries of departments of revenue and finance besides others. “We have given an in-principle approval to this plan. Many things need to be sorted out. We have to talk to the police and the central government. We will not do anything which will cause inconvenience to public,” he assured. “We will try to implement it for a few days or a week or 10-15 days. Many kind of exemptions need to be given to vehicles like ambulances. We will discontinue it if there are major problems and we will do it again after a gap. There are several options,” he said.
One must carefully notice his attitude while describing the events. First, he didn’t even setup the committee or the planning. Secondly, he didn’t include the transport commissioner or the department of revenue in extrapolating the financial stability to increase the public transport system if at all the odd-even formula is implemented. Finally, his government has already given an “in-principle approval” to this plan. What is an in-principle approval? He also says, they have to talk to the Police and Central government about this plan. Also, Taking premature decisions and making it public and later say it was not their intention.
They are ready to stop implementing Odd-Even formula if people don’t want it? A Chief Minister of a state goes on issuing these kind of mindless orders and later “rectify” by giving some lame reasons. The sole intention of AAP government and Arvind Kejriwal looks like, introduce some impossible schemes and send it to governor seeking his approval. Once the governor rejects this proposal, play a victim card and cry out loudly “Central government is not allowing us to work”. There can be no major gimmickry than the one that AAP government has adopted in their governance.
Their Odd-Even formula derived from Beijing model is a mammoth task to implement. They should know the detailed planning that Chinese government has adopted in implementing it. The number of the private cars that middle class Chinese people owned in Beijing during 2005 was counted to be about 26 Lakhs. It was estimated that, it might reach 50 Lakhs by the end of 2010. This was the time that Chinese government has stepped in to put its control on the car purchases.
– Chinese government has implemented its express subway construction of 228 KMs started in 2005.
– In order to encourage the public transport usage, their government has decided to have a common price for 20 KM ride in any of their public transport, either it is in metro or in bus. It was just 2 Yuan’s (20 Rupees).
– If there is any violation in the traffic guidelines, a heavy amount of fine (200 Yuan’s i.e. 2000 Rupees) was implemented. The entire traffic violations was caught regularly through the cameras installed across the streets and didn’t disturb the ongoing vehicles movement.
– The punishments would go to such an extent that, the driver’s license gets cancelled immediately, and after six months of ban on their license, the person has to retake their driving examination in order to obtain their licenses back.
Remember, all these processes are entirely operated without any manual intervention. Now coming back to Delhi, how far this idea seems to be plausible? As per the census data on non-agricultural workers in Delhi, a staggering 4.5 million people in NCT Delhi (National Capital Territory) commute to work daily. Out of which, more than 6 Lakhs are female workers. AAP government seems to have lost while making its decisions. Considering the Delhi’s public transport reach and its effectiveness, Odd-Even formula seems to be a mere publicity stunt and nothing else.
Facts of Beijing Model: Vijayavani (Kannada daily newspaper)