Indians For Guns

Dear All,

This is a humble request for my fellow IFGs who live in Delhi (and even for those who don't) to express their veiws on the proposed ruling for allowing cars with odd and even ending numbers to ply on alternate days in the city. My understanding is as under :
Delhi as we know is a city with the highest number of vehicles in the country, infact there was a study (by the Times of India) recently which showed that it has approx 88.27 lakhs as vehicular population as compared to only 25 lakhs in Mumbai. These statistics show that we do have a problem which the other metros do not. This is most probably a result of the undue dependance on private vehicles for transport. And this is despite the introduction of a hugely successful Metro Rail system. Secondly the mindset of us Delhites of " being with the Jones" and a desire to own a four wheeler . I see a number of houses that have a surplus of vehicles (one even for thier servants for going to the market ) and whether or not they have adequate parking space (you will be surprised how many people have been killed simply because they parked their car in a space someone thought was his own).
I really wonder how this rule will change anything, and if does so, how long will it last ( the BRT Corridor , a case in mind). There are so many variables in this setup that it is bound to fail (I am trying not to be a skeptic but a realist).
One of the reasons Mumbai has one third the number is primarily due to the excellent transport system that exists amoung others. I feel we should think of ways to improving our public transportation and controlling Industrial pollution to improve first. Even things like burning of leaves and garbage contribute a sizeable percentage to the pollution problem and has nothing to do with the vehicular population. We need to serious think out a solution and not have knee jerk reactions to a problem which is genuine and needs serious political, Government and public participation .

Chicky

Not to mention the solution most of the industrious folks will come up with - get an alternate license plate and change as needed.

Anyway, should be a nice pay raise for the police.

Don't think it can be implemented soon. What happened to the 'Car free' Tuesdays in Gurgaon and now in Delhi.
In Gurgaon senior Police officials cycle to work on the car free day followed by local politicians, no one else is bothered and it shows with traffic as usual.

Atul

PeterTheFish wrote:Not to mention the solution most of the industrious folks will come up with - get an alternate license plate and change as needed.

Anyway, should be a nice pay raise for the police.

That was my first gut feeling. Second is that people will simply get another vehicle with the required last digit on the number plate.

kshitij wrote:

PeterTheFish wrote:Not to mention the solution most of the industrious folks will come up with - get an alternate license plate and change as needed.

Anyway, should be a nice pay raise for the police.

That was my first gut feeling. Second is that people will simply get another vehicle with the required last digit on the number plate.

I think life will get a lot more fun for the Delhi girls... You know, one boyfriend with even numbered vehicle & the other with odd....

main13 wrote:I think life will get a lot more fun for the Delhi girls... You know, one boyfriend with even numbered vehicle & the other with odd....

Odd as it may sound...that my friend, methinks is sure to even out some serious odds!

Or as a friend says...what happens if a couple go to late night wedding/party on a even numbered car and the party ends well after the midnight !

After midnight who can say, what will happen - the odds are even!?

I suppose the resourceful Delhi Cinderellas will use 'public transport' on the way in & call on the way back, their favourite 'knight' on a suitable steed, even or odd, as the case may be...

Gentlemen, can I be the devil's advocate here?

We live in what is essentially a capitalist society. Without getting into economic nitty-gritty, it simply means that we expect to gain some benefit from our work (or education, or daddy's deep pockets, or chamcha-ing the boss). (Unlike commie regimes, where you work, I laze around, and we both get the same benefits. I actually get more, because my dad is a senior member of the Politburo.)

Most Indians today, who own cars, are the first generation to do so (look at per capita car ownership figures from 70s & 80s, and today). Again, most of us are paying for the cars through EMIs, and slogging like donkeys to pay the same.

In this scenario, someone comes, and says look buddy, you go back to the days where you earned 10% of what you are earning today, and get into a mass transport system. As a favour, we'll let you keep cable TV and not force you to watch Krishi Darshan on DD.

Heck man, many people have literally dragged themselves up from the "mass" and into the "elite" (aka taxpayers, 2-4% of India). These are the guys who fund the country. Yup. That line in your tax statement, saying tax paid? That pays the salaries of the government. And the fuel for their gas-guzzling Ambassadors. And the VIP Bombardiers.

I have used Mumbai's much vaunted local train system, and can vouch that it is not a place where people with sensitive nostrils and advanced sense of hygiene will thrive. And I come out of the train, walk up and down a few hundred steps, being jostled by a mass of sweaty humanity, and then I again get in line for a bus, auto, cab, whatever. Today, even if the traffic is at a standstill, I still have airconditioning. And I have a nice armour against the stinks of the city.

I am aware that Delhi Metro is supposed to be a great success, and having ridden on it a couple of times, was really happy with the time it took me across that great city. But then, I got out of the metro and fell into the clutches of the much-hated Delhi autowala.

It sounds politically incorrect, insensitive, insufferably selfish, but when the government gets my car, it'll be, like the NRA likes to say, with my cold, dead hands still wrapped around the steering wheel, and my cold dead foot still shoving the accelerator through the floor!!

But let me make a concession here. The day every (and I mean every, from the President down to non-managerial cadres) govt employee walks, cycles, or takes public (and only public) transport to work, paying with their own money, irrespective of the distance, I'll go back to the sweat buckets, aka local trains. Imagine coming home and telling the family, hey, I got jostled by the chief minister today, and asked the police commissioner to put my bag on the rack!

Hear,hear...I agree whole heartedly with essdee1972. Well said

Its a good initiative with pollution breaking all records & Gov admitting in Parliament that 80 ppl dying daily in delhi due to respiratory issues. Enforceability would be big issue. This is one drastic measure but good one if it keeps atleast 30% of the vehicles off the road. This will also result in less commute time meaning lesser pollution. This one of many measures Gov is taking. Recent reports say conditions of lungs of delhi kids are that of chain smokers. I believe none of us want a polluted earth. Those who are hard pressed I heard this rule is going to be between 8 am to 8 pm. Then there are taxis. I got three vehicles.. Odd..even as well ALL no. vehicle. Hoping for lesser nos of vehicle on road so could take "ALL NO" vehicle to office:)

Its a extremely stupid attempt at stupidity !

In no particular order the following are the cause of the pollution

1. 80,000 trucks.It was 50,000 last year. It is 80,000 now. Trucks. With both even & odd number plates. That enter Delhi. EVERY DAY !Unsolveable ?
2. Road dust & waste burning account for 30% of Delhi's total particulate emission. A comprehensive 2010 study found Road dust - yes, ROAD DUST - accounted for Delhi's 31% PM10 & 9% PM2.5 emissions. Unsolveable ?
3. Punjab paddy-stub burning. Unsolveable ?
How difficult are these to solve? Are these clowns blind?

The middle class are just the soft targets .For a city that boasts of a ridiculously inept, broken down, erratic, madly crowded transport infrastructure, the odd-even system is CRUEL ! Being a ex Delhite ,I am not paticularly a fan of the earlier regime but feeling a teeny weeny nostalgic for Sheila Aunty ,she most often got things right than wrong ,minus the drama !

On a lighter vein if my car number ends with zero ?? Is that good or bad , its neither odd nor even !!



A insightful piece by Anand Ranganathan a, a scientist and journalist himself into the fear mongering and playing into the paranoia of us ignoramuses :

http://www.newslaundry.com/2015/06/19/c ... pollution/#

Returning to the 2014 WHO report, Delhi – having a mean PM2.5 reading of 153 μg/m3 in the year 2013, the figure a collate of the data supplied by six monitoring stations – was labelled by the Indian media as the world’s most polluted city. That’s right – six PM2.5 samplers, for a population size that is six times that of New Zealand, gifted Delhi this soubriquet.

Delhi was joined by 12 more north Indian cities in this hall of infamy. As mentioned earlier, the comparative PM2.5 data was sourced from national or sub-national websites.Doubtless, our cities are reeking of poisonous air. But look around for scary headlines and you’ll find them with ease. We are not the only ones pinching our already blocked noses – the air of most other big cities of the world is supposedly unfit for breathing. If Beijing is facing airpocalypse, some would have you believe that London is burning; so are Paris, Brussels, Madrid, and Los Angeles.

Yes, politicians need to be woken up, but hysterical, bloodcurdling headlines end up obfuscating the issue altogether. And of late, they seem to be sprouting like wild mushrooms in a damp forest.

“Deadly air: 40% children in Delhi have weak lungs, finds survey,” screams HT, without disclosing that the non-peer-reviewed survey was paid-for by an Air purifier company.

“Rich or poor, Delhi kids have the weakest lungs,” yells the same newspaper, after having conducted a study with a grand sample size of 4 in a population of 25 million;

“Foul air killing up to 80 Delhites a day, claims study,” shrieks TOI. On closer inspection, it turns out the study is a scientific paper that does not contain even a single mention of the word “Delhi”. What the scientists report is a model that superimposes PM2.5 numbers and the global burden of disease, wherein is also included air pollution caused by the use of solid fuels, second-hand tobacco smoke, and active tobacco smoking. Both, the global burden of disease data and the PM2.5 data is from 2010, with the latter measured indirectly through satellites as well as modelling. The authors had studied Delhi’s pollution previously in 2010, using what they called Spatiotemporal Land Use Regression Models. Currently, the authors postulate that, based on their modelling, the PM2.5 levels in India would need to come down by “20–30% over the next 15 years merely to offset increases in PM2.5-attributable mortality from aging populations”. The authors also explicitly mention that “Several key assumptions accompany the estimation of changes in attributable mortality that result from changes in PM2.5” and that “Our core estimates of potential reductions in mortality attributable to changes in ambient PM2.5 assume that other drivers of mortality are held constant”.

Remarkably, TOI also failed to mention that the national average per-capita mortality rates attributable to PM2.5 as reported by the authors were: 40 for Germany, 33 for the USA, and 47 for India (deaths per 1 lac people)

Here's IIT Kanpur saying cars are only 10 percent of the pollution !!! Somebody please pass this to the clowns !
http://m.economictimes.com/news/politic ... 115310.cms


Guess tackling the real culprit hurts the wallet eh !!! So go hammer the middle class ? So much for the Messiah of anti corruption !!!

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Jatinder Singh Deo...a man on fire but a very valid point indeed.
I specially like like his comment " a extremely stupid attempt at stupidity "