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Road Mishap Deaths In India Highest In Third World

The Grand Trunk Road, one of India's historic thoroughfares, is a major national highway as important to the northern part of the country as, say, Inter state 95 is to the eastern United States The Grand Trunk, however, carries a daily traffic chaos that dramatized the clash between the old traditional India and the new modern nation.

On one particularly lethal stretch near this capital's northern outskirts, normal traffic involves passenger cars whizzing along past bicycles, which in turn dodged around carts pulled by smartly trotting horses, which must somehow get around more slowly moving tricycle rickshaws, which must in turn contend with rubberwheeled carts pulled by plodding bullocks.

Three-wheeled motorized rickshaws, two-wheeled motor scooters, motorcycles and mopeds dart in and out of the parade. Pedestrians cross the highway at will, often seeming not to look. Occasionally a cow wanders into the traffic.

Into this cahotic stream plunge speeding buses, some of them listing and in obvious need of maintenance, so, full of passengers that some hang off the outside. The buses are accompanied by hurtling trucks, the terror of Indian roads. Both buses and trucks bull through the other traffic seemingly at will.

As India somewhat painfully evolves into an industrial nation, it is acquiring a reputation as having the most dangerous roads of any major country and perhaps of any country in the world.

Not least because of disordered conditions like those on the Grand Trunk and many other streets and highway, every day, on the average about 75 Indians are killed in traffic accidents, and more than 300 are injured. More than 26,000 people died on Indian roads in 1981, the latest year for which complete figures are available. That is roughly half the number of traffic deaths in the United States, which has nearly 40 times as many motor vehicles.

Four times as many people die in traffic accidents in Delhi than are murdered. Five times as many die on the roads, nation wide, as are killed in the religious strife that appears to be endemic to India Twenty times more people die in traffic accidents, than are killed in an average year during the floods that are scourage of rural India.

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According to some sets of statistics, India's fatality rate of 52 deaths per 10,000 motor vehicles compared with roughly 3 per 10,000 in the United States, is the highest in the Third World.

Although the rate of accidents to vehicles on the roads is dropping somewhat as some measures of control begin to be felt the total of accidents, deaths and injuries continues to rise.

As India rushes from the age of the bullock cart into that of the internal

combustion engine, experts on the problem

say, neither its attitudes, traffic skills nor resources have been able to cope with the change fast enough or well enough.

City and village streets often seem to operate under horse-and-buggy rules. Pedestrians cross whatever and whenever they want, as if there had been no change from the days of slower and more begin traffic.

Vehicles routinely cross the center line and drive in the wrong lane. It is not unusual to see a scooter or a car going the wrong way on a divided highway. Sometimes two whole lanes of traffic travel on the wrong side of an undivided roadway.

Cars out in and out of lanes at will disregarding those behind Cars and heavy vehicles routinely barrel through the centres of villages at high speed, relying on people and animals to scatter and save themselves.

Out on the open road, truck drivers and bus drivers pull out to pass each other in the face of on coming traffic and all too often report the deaths of 10,20 or

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मंजिल की तरफ, तेजी से बढ़ता उत्तर प्रदेश

मंजिल खुशहाली की अमन और चैन की एक कल्याणकारी राज्य के स्थापना की, स्वाभाविक रूप से आसान नहीं होती, पर तरक्की की रफ्तार से पता मिलता है उन कोशिशों का जो कदम दर कदम, इस मंजिल को पास लाती है । उत्तर प्रदेश में इन कोशिशों का केन्द्र विन्दु है प्रधान मन्त्री श्रीमती इन्दिरा गाँधी का बीस सूत्री कार्यक्रम ।

जिस लगन और ईमानदारी से इस कार्यक्रम को प्रदेश के बहुमुखी विकास के लिए लागू किया जा रहा है उसी का नतीजा है कि इस कार्यक्रम के कम से कम दस सूत्रों के अन्तर्गत सो फीसदी से भी अधिक सफलता प्राप्त हुई है । सबसे उल्लेखनीय सफलता है समाज के सबसे पिछड़े वर्ग अनुसूचित जाति । जन जातियों के आर्थिक उत्थान के क्षेत्र में जहाँ इस वर्ग के परिवारों द्वारा स्थापित ग्रामीण तथा लघु उद्योग की उपलब्धि, लक्ष्य से पांच सौ गुना से भी अधिक है । इसी वर्ष, इस वर्ग के परिवारों के लिये पाँच हजार से भी अधिक आवास निर्मित किये गये ।

इसके अलावा, शासन ने अनुसूचित जातियों का आरक्षण कोटा, तीन वर्ष में पूरा करने का फैसला किया है तथा निराश्रित विधवाओं के लिये अनुदान योजना भी लागू की गई । सावं जनिक वितरण व्यवस्था के तहत ग्यारह हजार से अधिक दुकानों द्वारा ४२८ करोड़ रु० को वस्तुओं का वितरण हुआ ।

उधर, सहकारी ऋण वितरण के मामले में उत्तर प्रदेश, सम्पूर्ण देश में प्रथम रहा। शिक्षित बेरोजगारों को रोजगार दिलाने की योजना के तहत ३७,००० लोगों को रोजगार की व्यवस्था की गई । इसके अलावा स्वत: रोजगार योजना के अन्तर्गत २७,००० व्यक्ति लाभान्वित हुये । औद्योगीकरण के क्षेत्र में चार बड़े उर्वरक कारखानों और बारह कताई मिलों की स्थापना का निर्णय किया गया। इसी अवधि में ६, २०४ गाँवों तथा ४,२२९ हरिजन बस्तियों का विद्य. तीकरण हुआ । कृषि के क्षेत्र में १५२.५ लाख टन गेहूं का उत्पादन हुआ तथा गन्ना किसानों को ४०० करोड़ रु० देय राशि का भुगतान किया गया । विशेष सजगता बरते जाने से प्रदेश की शान्ति व्यवस्था में निरन्तर सुधार हो रहा है ।

२० सूत्र / जन विश्वास के ठोस आधार

सूचना एवं जन-सम्पर्क विभाग, उत्तर प्रदेश द्वारा प्रसारित EXEDEDEDE©©©©DEDEDE KEEEEEKE

Because of a lack of money, modern roads are too few, or too narrow or in too serious a state of demands being made of them. W

In short, the volume of traffic has grown so fast that the support services taken for granted in the West have not been able to keep up. There were more than four million registered motor vehicles in the country in 1980, the latest year for which figures are available. That is more than double the humber only 10

They are in a hurry and they can't years earlier, and the total is still growing

wait, at the risk of their own lives, he said.

Matthew attributes much of the problem to the multiplicity of traffic-the variety of vehicles that try to use a relatively small space, caught as it is between two eras of transport, India probably has little other choice than to live with this condition for some time.

A recent analysis by the police in Delhi, whose traffic patterns typify the problem, suggests that the mismatch between types of vehicles is a major cause of fatalities. Trucks and buses were found to be involved in roughly half of accidents because time is really money in a country of scarcity, even more than in the West.

Lack of money also means fewer drives, which means they drive longer and get more tired. Bus drivers, similarly are made to cover a route in a certain timespan, so the driver has a tendency to speed up Paul said.

To complicate things further, he added truck and bus owners typically skimp on maintenance. As a result, unroad worthy, often ramshackle vehicles ply the streets.

Lack of money also means that proper licensing procedures are not followed because of lack of personnel. Virtualy anyone can buy a license. Proper driver training centres do not exist and so unqualified drivers abound. There are too few traffic policemen to enforce the traffic regulations.