WHEN all over the world, better roads allow vehicles to be driven faster, t’was strange the Madras Hight Court ordered the reduction of speed limits from 120 kmph to the old limit of 80 kmph.
But they were right in doing so. ‘But we have better infrastructure now!’ grumbled the authorities, ‘Why reduce the limit?’
Yes, my dear friends, billions of rupees are spent on better infrastructure, but not much spent on insuring road discipline.
The other day, while returning from Lonavala, I saw a lengthy flyover being built on an existing road.
The idea was to allow traffic to move without having to contend with local autorickshaws and cabs that zoomed in and out of gullies and roads, since the road below served a suburb were discipline was difficult to maintain.
A few years back I had seen that same road being trebled in it’s size, but traffic jams had not decreased because order was terrible.
Now millions of rupees being spent for a costly flyover on top of this broad road, when that money should have gone into seeing that traffic policemen did their job, and cameras installed, so culprits were caught and punished.
Instead we reduce the speed limit, because now there’s less money available for other needed projects! A girl is raped and the minister asks, ‘what was she doing at that hour?’
Reduce the speed limit: Tell girls not to go out late, not to wear short skirts. Don’t wear jeans! The High Court was right, because the ones in charge care a damn about discipline.
A bishop in Kerala talks about love-jihad and narcotics-jihad.
Well, here, shouldn’t it be we who give our children a firm foundation of who to fall in love with or why drugs are harmful? No, that we don’t do! Instead we point fingers at a community and blame them.
Teach our girls to be strong spirited girls, maybe they were but those very spirits were broken by home and family and institutions which supported thinking, that girls had to be protected from love groups! Reduce the speed limit by taking away their phones! Build foundations of discipline, and there won’t be a need for courts to intervene.
What we fear today, is another lockdown. Who brings about these lockdowns? Why men and women who walk around without masks and without maintaining social distance! One has just to see crowds at parks, beaches or railway stations to realize soon there could be another wave just because we stopped disciplining ourselves!
Don’t blame it on a corrupt police force. Blame it on yourselves. Watch the way you drive, watch the way you treat your women, or how you walk around during this critical Covid period, and you will realize it is discipline not infrastructure we need to improve in our country..!
