How will India behave on roads?

1.   All Indian roads (including highways) cater to multi-way, multi-load, multi-dimension and multi-mix traffic and are most chaotic anywhere. The road traffic comprise children, youths, adults, elderlies, chickens, goats, cows, push-carts, bullock-carts, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, super-cars, buses, trucks and trailers of all shapes and sizes that move in multi-directions with no regard for any law, system and/or norm, leave aside traffic management and road safety regulations. Twenty rupees quietly slipped into the hand of a law enforcer will get you out of violation of normal traffic rule, interpretation of which varies from place to place. Driving opposite on a one-way road is nothing abnormal. So don’t you loose patience if you encounter someone driving directly at you on one-way street. Patience is tested to the limit.

2.   The road safety in India is huge. As per International Road Federation (IRF), India accounts for highest number of road deaths in the world. Every four minute, one person is killed because of a road accident. At present India accounts for solid 10% of global road accidents with more than 146,000 fatalities annually, the highest in the world. And the road accidents are costing Indian economy $8 billion or Rs 56,000 crore  every year. In my view this by no means is an actual figure.  Many accidents are not reported and all road accident costs (e.g., productive man-hour lost) are not fully captured in this figure. 

3.    These behavior, mindset and  situation can not go hand-in-hand with $5 trillion (no idea how much in crores of rupees) economy (third-largest in the world behind US and China) that India is pitching to become  by 2024. India needs to reform every sector and take a path to massive growth trajectory with overall mindset befitting to it. The recently approved India’s Union Budget 2019 bets on three main drivers to set the economy on the path of achieving $5 trillion target: massive infrastructure development, easing the credit squeeze and major structural changes in agriculture. 

4.    Infrastructure development is not just constructing physical structure. Road is an infrastructure, a physical structure. Road by itself does not give beneficial outcome of infrastructure development. You do not derive benefits just by constructing a road. The proper use of the road will give benefits. What good are the roads, even if they are of highest standards and specifications, if the above traffic disorders are to continue forever. The government of India (GOI) may kiss the dream of $5 trillion economy goodbye right away if there is no change in road behavior of the people. GOI knows it. 

5.    So Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019 (the Act) is GOI's strategic move, a massively disruptive reform in trying to redirect peoples’ perception through behavioral re-engineering to a more discipline and organized India. In my view it will be no less than Goods and Services Tax (GST) if implemented rigorously. The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019 amends the provisions under the Motor Vehicles Act of 1988, had been under discussion  for quite some time and had even been passed by Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) in April 2017. However, it could not get Rajya Sabha (upper house) clearance and lapsed with the dissolution of 16th Lok Sabha before the 2019 Indian general election of April/May. The amended Act has now been approved by Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha  on 30 July and 31 July 2019 respectively.

6.    The relevant amendments, among others, that concern Bhutanese drivers on Indian roads are the following:

Cost For Traffic Violations in India
Section	Offence	New Penalty (Rs)	Old Penalty (Rs)
181	Driving without a licence	5,000	500
194B	Not wearing a seat belt	1,000	100
179	Disobedience of orders of authorities	2,000	500
185	Drink and drive	10,000	2,000
194	Overloading of vehicles (truck)	20,000 (1st one ton) + 2,000 (every ton)	2,000 (1st one ton) +1,000 (every ton)
194A	Overloading of vehicles (Passenger)	1,000 per passenger	No provision
184	Dangerous driving	5,000	1,000
184	Mobile phone use while driving	5,000	1,000
194E	Not giving pass to emergency vehicles	10,000	No provision
189	Racing	5,000	500
183	Over-speeding (Light Vehicle)	1,000	400
183	Over-speeding (Heavy Vehicle)	2,000	400
134	Hit-and-run case (Death)	2,00,000	50,000
134	Hit-and-run case (Injury)	50,000	12,500
177A	Road regulation violation	500	100

7.    The road act/law has to have deterrent effect: first that the punishments imposed on offenders will deter or prevent that particular offender from committing further crimes, and second threat of penalty deter people from committing road safety offences. The earlier level of cost of traffic violations have had practically no major deterrent effect on general public. The penalty needs to be significant, not a paltry amount, that people feel the consequences of breaking the law and not find  themselves at ease to break the laws and pay fines or find unscrupulous means to get around to cover-up offences.

8.    In China if a driver is found to have blood alcohol content (BAC) over the allowable limit, the person will pay RMB 2,000 (Nu 20,000 equivalent) plus face 6 months suspension of driving licence. In South Africa it is up to 6 years jail and R120,000 (Nu 25,000) fine. In North America it is $50 (Nu 35,000) fine. In South Korea driving licence is suspended up to 1 year. All these are not intended to punish people but to discipline the road users in following road regulations and make people more responsible. The road regulations are aimed at inducing behavioral change for preventive awareness, not at punitive actions.

9.    Therefore, the choice for India is between (i) more forceful amendment of the Motor Vehicles Act of 1988 for stronger regulatory and penalty regime to bring about more enlightened road use, prevent road accidents and improve road safety aimed at eventual road users’ behavioral change, and (ii) keep status-quo with token penalty and let everyone abuse the system in chaotic bazaar where progressive innovations/ initiatives are entangled in anarchy and are deprived of disciplined, organized and progressive environment.

10.    In moving head with the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019, corruption increase near-term is obvious. Increased penalty will entail demand for higher amounts to let offenders go scot-free by rent-seekers/unscrupulous elements/corrupt officials. But then why would anyone pass a law that will encourage higher corruption? I do not believe the strategy can be so numb on corruption. Two issues are critical here: first, when there are less traffic violations (due to deterrent effect) the question of paying more illegally is little vain longer-term, and second the Act rests totally on how effective is its implementation.  Effective implementation will weed out corruption in due course. So, complete effort is meaningless if there is no strategy for its strong implementation. 

11.   The Act also stipulates that if the contractors or authorities fail to follow prescribed road designs and standards, and their failure results in injury or death of a person, they will be held responsible for the same. There was no such provision in the earlier act. This approach and strong dependency on digital media for monitoring road transport efficiency give the impression that GOI is far more serious this time around on the implementation of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019. Till then, let's keep the fingers crossed!