Omissions and emissions

Omissions and emissions

The chaos witnessed in the Capital's public transport that has thrown the entire city out of gear is, indeed, shocking. What is worse, the chaos is the product of a conspiracy by the unholy politician-mafia nexus. It is the result of a systematic sabotage of the move towards Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) by the diesel lobby in cahoots with a corrupt state machinery. After all, it was almost two years ago that the Supreme Court ruled that all public transport should move away from a grossly polluting diesel towards a much more cleaner option, the CNG. And with good reason too: a Centre for the Science and Environment study revealed that at least one person died prematurely every hour in Delhi only due to suspended particulate matter, emitted directly by diesel engines. However, both the Union government and the Delhi government acted as if they were deaf and did absolutely nothing since the 1998 court ruling to bring about a change.

History is replete with examples when entire cities have been rebuilt in less than a year after a complete collapse. In this case, the challenge was merely to revamp the public transport system in about two years to make it safe and sustainable. The fact is that particle emissions from CNG-run vehicles are low enough to trump even the Euro-IV norms (applicable from 2005), let alone the Euro II-compliant diesel buses. As the deadline approached, the interested parties discredited the CNG option through a systematic campaign even as the NDA-led Union government and the Congress-led state government went on blaming each other for the non-implementation of the court order. Today, they are using the chaos in the city as a lever to pressurise the apex court to extend the deadline. Consider the facts: First, the Indraprastha Gas Limited, an agency under the Union ministry of petroleum and gas was formed after the July 1998 order of the Supreme Court to set up 80 CNG fuel stations in the Capital. Only about 60 suchstations have come up since then. The result: unending queues outside CNG filling stations. The ministry is clearly responsible for the crisis.

So is the Sheila Dikshit-led Delhi government. It announced that at least 5,000 apex court order-compliant buses will be available from April 1. The reality turned out to be a classical April fool joke. And a cruel one at that. There were barely one-fifth of them plying on the roads, with desperate commuters struggling to find some space in or on the bus. Why? Although 28,000 affidavits were filed in the Supreme Court by public transport operators, only the transport commissioner and three other officers were designated to sign these permits. In a city, which is bursting at the seams with netas and babus, ironically there were not enough bureaucrats to sign affidavits? This is nothing short of a national disgrace. And, to top it all, the minister for transport of the Delhi government has the cheek to spend millions of rupees to explain why the switch could not be made. In the midst of this blame-game, the hapless commuter, perched precariously on the rooftops of moving vehicles, for no fault of his, turns outto be the main sufferer. The crisis of CNG is not one of unrealistic deadlines or lack of resources. It's one of governance.