Roti, Kapda, Makaan - Aur CAR!

The latest idea of the “transport planner”, Delhi’s Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) corridor, seems to have been universally hailed as an unmitigated disaster.

Yet, life is cheap in India, and even the death of a young man in a mishap on the corridor seems to have elicited a response from the senior-most official of the Delhi government, the chief secretary, that can only be called “callous”.

It’s like the Michael Jackson song:

All I wanna say is that,
They don’t really care about us.

Why has this project failed?

My firm belief is that it has failed precisely because it was another government project meant to “help the poor” – the poor need buses – and, of course, to win their votes. The ugly "vote motive" there again.

There is another way to look at the mess called New Delhi, which is a “new” city, that struck me while I was in the DDA locality of Vasant Kunj on Saturday night.

All the government-built flats there have “scooter garages”.

Yet, all the streets are overflowing with cars.

If this trend is extrapolated using statistical techniques our planners have all mastered, it should become clear that every Indian will have a car someday soon.

The “Theory of the Vicious Circle of Poverty”, taught to me in Delhi University, is false. As Peter Bauer famously said, "If this theory were true the entire planet would still be in the Old Stone Age."

Therefore, plan for car owners – and prosperity, and the future will take care of itself.

If there is enough road space for cars, buses will travel faster too.