Last evening when I was going back to home by
a shared auto a woman signalled auto driver to stop with a huge
bundle of rags. First driver hesitated to stop but suddenly he realized he
could make money from the extreme back seat of his auto. He stopped and asked
woman to take extreme back seat. But woman started begging for half of the
fare. She insisted that extreme back seat would be anyway remaining vacant.
Finally she got the seat and reached to the destination in half fare. It was
really disturbing to see that she was willing to walk for hours instead of
paying fare. This is the plight of thousands of poor people living in small
towns.
When we discuss about improving the living condition of poor
people, it is concentrated only on providing food. This was the reason behind
introduction of PDS (Public Distribution System) targeted towards poor people.
But it also failed due to insensitivity of our administration and society as a
whole. But leave it for now as it is not the point of discussion here. The
point is that do we ever think of PTS (Public Transport System) targeted
towards poor people? Apart from metropolitan cities majority of other cities in
India have no proper public transport system targeted towards poor section of
the society. Transportation is left for private sector only. Private sector
gives service for money but what about those marginalized people who don’t have
enough money to pay fare? A cheap
transport system is basic need of a city. It also strengthen the concept of
welfare state what India is supposed to be.
In metropolitan cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and
others we find that these cities have a strong network of city bus service,
which are cheap and targeted towards common people. In the course of time these
cities have also developed new public transport system like Metro train to
cater the need of public. In various cities in Europe public transport system
is free. The motivations for making a transit system free are obvious.
Increased ridership can relieve traffic, improve the environment, boost the
system’s efficiency, and give residents more spending money and most important
help the poor. One can think that developing
country like India cannot afford to run a transport system for free. E. Shreedharan
former chief of Delhi Metro once said, “Public transport system is not for
making money but to provide service to the people.” But in small towns this
concept is totally ignored. Due to this poor people suffer more.
We should not try to see
everything from the prism of balance sheet, because we cannot calculate all the
benefits in term of money. Above all sensitivity
is a vital ingredient of the society that must be thoroughly interwoven into the
system.
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