NEW DELHI // Few world capitals can offer a public transport experience quite like New Delhi: cheap, fast, and frequently fatal. About 4,000 independently owned buses, called Bluelines, may be the least expensive transit option in town, but they take another kind of toll on city streets. About 100 people die every year in bus-related incidents. Earlier this month, Sanchit Gupta lost his footing on a crowded bus and tumbled to the street below. A second bus crushed him to death, making the 15-year-old student Bluelines' 65th victim. Angry schoolchildren who had witnessed the event hurled stones at the bus.
But thanks to a dearth of city buses, it will take more than stones to wrest New Delhi from its Blueline dependency. "There is no one stopping them from doing what they want," said Sanjay Kaul of People's Action, an advocacy group specialising in urban governance issues. "There are no checks and balances. It is complete anarchy." Order has never been a hallmark of New Delhi roads, where motorists routinely sidestep police check points, or worse, drive right through them. And every day, Delhi's strained streets heave with rickshaws, errant cows and a tangle of traffic. But nothing packs quite the same punch as a few tonnes of rubber and steel.
Because most Blueline drivers hail from local villages, lack formal training and get paid a negligible wage relative to the number of passengers they cram into a bus, they have to speed to survive to try to pick up more fares. And invariably, buses involved in fatal accidents reflect those pressures. The driver may be unlicenced or drunk. The speed regulator on the bus is typically disconnected. Sometimes, the driver is not behind the wheel at all, but rather his unlicenced helper.
"Because the driver is doing 12 to 14 hours a day in hope of maximising his money," Mr Kaul said. "He has a set amount of money to pay back. This whole thing goes round and round in circles." Mr Kaul's organisation, People's Action, represents one of the few sustained voices of protest, organising rallies and delivering petitions to the government. But, Mr Kaul said, there is a reason why government officials dodge calls from the media about Bluelines.
"There is a complete hierarchy of corruption," he said. "For every illegality that happens, there is someone else who benefits or profits. So the system starts sustaining itself. "Now the network is so large - the police are involved, the traffic department is involved, even political parties are involved." Indeed, even the names and phone numbers emblazoned on the sides of city buses are of little use. Purportedly, they are contact details for the bus owner. But three calls to three different operators resulted in a 'not-in-service' message.
Likewise, Delhi's state transport department did not respond to several calls for comment. For years, New Delhi has been a city that shrugs its collective shoulders, as if the death toll were a natural phenomenon, as inevitable as the outbreak of Dengue fever. One of the few voices calling for change belongs to 23-year-old Gaurav Shukla. For nearly a year, the university student has been chronicling the ravages of the city's private bus fleet on her website.
These days, he said, only the most horrific Blueline runs garner attention from the media, much less the government - like last October, when a driver killed eight people in a single run by ploughing into them at a bus stop. "Nobody talks about it," Mr Shukla said. That is because victims hail, overwhelmingly, from the city's invisible fringe - the countless labourers, street merchants, and villagers who crisscross Delhi's congested arteries.
"Normally victims are not from high-profile families that travel in cars," Mr Shukla said. Victims from India's lowest social rungs have little hope, he said, against established interests. "The operators, most of them are linked to politicians. Normally, the government downplays the issue, gives assurances and all that. But nothing's happening. Buses are still flying on the roads," he added. Trouble is, without a comprehensive public transit strategy, the city may have to rely on its dubious fleet of private buses. That reliance was exposed last July, when authorities made a move against them, corralling about 2,500 which had failed safety tests.
"We had no idea how careless they are," Sheila Dikshit, Delhi's chief minister, said at the time. "They have no right to overspend and endanger the lives of people. They had no control over speed, so we had to intervene." But not even hundreds of state buses suddenly pressed into service could get the city moving again, with commuters late for work or stranded across the city. The situation only improved when the Bluelines were returned to the fold a few days later.
There is, however, some hope for these killing streets. New Delhi's subway system is undergoing dramatic expansion, on its way to becoming one of the biggest metros in the world. And the state-operated Red Line service was inaugurated this summer, promising not only the most stringent road safety policies, but - a first for the city - air-conditioned buses. But that is not soon enough for Mr Kaul, who does not see Delhi's transport alternatives coming of age for at least another five years.
"That means we have agreed to kill 500 more people, guaranteed," he said. ccotroneo@thenational.ae