[Leica] Indian traffic

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

Larry,
That is pretty accurate - driving here is like that. That said I have
had exactly one accident in my 40 years odd driving that was serious.
Incidentally, the NYT made a mistake - Indian accident rate is not the
highest in the world, it is highest in absolute numbers that we have
an accurate count on. Norway is the lowest at 1.2 deaths per 10,000
vehicles, most developed nations are around 3, India and China are at
around 25, Bangladesh is at 85 and a lot of African countries are way
higher, culminating with Ethiopia at 200 - this data is from a friend
who is the top cop in my state of Tamil Nadu, so I presume it is
correct. My view is that it is a psyche born out of chronic shortages,
which most of us have grown up with (rationed cooking fuel, milk,
rice, wheat, etc), which makes people cling on to what they have, and
be opportunistic about anything. I would think it will not be quite as
bad as the next generation takes over, because such shortages have
reduced considerably in the last 20 years as we transformed ourselves
from a socialist to a market based economy.

The problem with the Indian psyche was put nicely by a writer called
Aakar Patel last year in a daily called The Mint (WSJ's Indian
collaboration), a part of which I reproduce below:

Quote
What explains the behavior of Indians? What explains the anarchy of
our cities? To find out, we must ask how our behavior is different.

Some characteristics unite Indians. The most visible is our
opportunism. One good way to judge a society is to see it in motion.
On the road, we observe the opportunism in the behavior of the Indian
driver. Where traffic halts on one side of the road in India ,
motorists will encroach the oncoming side because there is space
available there. If that leads to both sides being blocked, that is
fine, as long as we maintain our advantage over people behind us or
next to us. This is because the other man cannot be trusted to stay in
his place.

The Indian's instinct is to jump the traffic light if he is convinced
that the signal is not policed. If he gets flagged down by the police,
his instinct is to bolt. In an accident, his instinct is to flee.
Fatal motoring cases in India are a grim record of how the driver ran
over people and drove away.

We show the pattern of what is called a Hobbesian society: one in
which there is low trust between people. This instinct of
me-versus-the- world leads to irrational behavior, demonstrated when
Indians board flights. We form a mob at the entrance, and as the
flight is announced, scramble for the plane even though all tickets
are numbered. Airlines modify their boarding announcements for Indians
taking international flights.

Our opportunism necessarily means that we do not understand collective
good. Indians will litter if they are not policed. Someone else will
always pick up the rubbish we throw. Thailand 's toilets are used by as
many people as India 's toilets are, but they are likely to be not just
clean but spotless. This is because that's how the users leave them,
not the cleaners.

The Indian's reluctance to embrace collective good hurts his state. A
study of income-tax compliance between 1965 and 1993 in India
(Elsevier Science/Das- Gupta, Lahiri and Mookherjee) concluded that
"declining assessment intensity had a significant negative effect" on
compliance, while "traditional enforcement tools (searches, penalties
and prosecution activity) had only a limited effect" on Indians. The
authors puzzled over the fact that " India 's income tax performance
(was) below the average of countries with similar GDP per capita".

We do not think stealing from the state is a bad thing, and our
ambiguity extends to corruption, which also we do not view in absolute
terms. Political parties in India understand this and corruption is
not an issue in Indian politics. Politicians who are demonstrably
corrupt, recorded on camera taking a bribe or saying appalling things,
or convicted by a court, can hold legitimate hope of a
comeback-unthinkable in the West.

The opportunist is necessarily good at adapting, and that explains the
success of Indians abroad. We can follow someone else's rules well,
even if we can't enforce them at home ourselves.

Unquote

Cheers
Jayanand

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> Jayanand,
> A question. I spent several years in India from 1984 through 1987 as a
> Fulbright Professor at the Univ. of Delhi. The road traffic at the time was
> horrendous, much worse even than that of Boston, Athens, or Atlanta. 
> Today's
> New York Times featured a video on India's traffic death rate, the highest
> in the world. The video looked identical to those of my home movies taken a
> quarter of a century ago. Same mix of pedestrians, animals, mopeds, motor
> tricycles, autos, trucks, busses all interacting without discipline or
> regulation. Are the conditions still as bad or was the Times engaging in
> yellow journalism?
>
> http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/06/07/world/asia/1247467632515/india-s-highways-of-death.html
>
> Larry Z
>
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