A little bit exploring, even talking to some of the most passionate supporters and planners of the idea, made it very clear what we imagined was a project to “add” infrastructure and traffic-carrying capacity on our roads at great cost in money and in terms of the loss of trees, not to speak of colossal inconvenience, was just a cynical and expensive exercise in enforcing a new kind of ideological socialism, so idiotic that even the CPM finds it insulting to its intelligence. The idea, as is now clear, was to take socialism to the streets, literally. Ensure equal distribution of traffic and road space by “taking away” lanes from private vehicles to persuade (read force) car-owners to shift to public transport. Now has that ever happened in the history of mankind except in Mao’s China or North Korea? And if there too, in the first it ended when private vehicles arrived, and in the second it will if North Koreans can buy cars. So the mess that you see, the reduction of road-space instead of expansion, is not a mistake. It is by design.

Knowing Sheila Dikshit, I can’t believe she was seized of some late revolutionary fervour on the eve of the second term. She was sold not just a lemon but a bus-load of lemons by well-meaning but not necessarily the wisest people. The choice to cut her losses, or to serve “their” cause is hers. As somebody who has admired her remarkably successful double tenure as Delhi’s chief minister, I would be sad to see her not able to get out of this trap six months before the election. Sadder still, that a good leader will pay the price merely for catering to the fancies and fantasies of some whose “ideological” motivations far surpass their wisdom in urban planning, and that it will take down with it the decent cause of public transport, even a BRT if planned prudently and wisely.

... contd.