Road transport india safety bill dunu roy itp jan 2016

Policy BriefGathering experts to improve transportation in India

INDIA TRANSPORT PORTALJanuary 2016

With over 1.4 lakhs road fatalities and 4.8 lakhs injured in 2014 alone - though the World Health Organisation (WHO) gives an estimate of 2 lakhs fatalities– road accident remains one of the leading causes of death in India (1). This means that there is at least one death every four minutes and one colli-sion every minute, due to road accidents on Indian killer roads. Paradoxically more than a tenth of the world’s road fatalities occurs in India, which only accounts for less than 3% of the world’s vehicles. Thus, this safety issue should be tackled as a matter of urgency by the Indian government. Despite the death of a Union cabinet minister in a car crash last year in Delhi and the recent letter signed by 50 MPs urging Prime Minister Modi to introduce the Road

IN BRIEF

At the beginning of January, Road and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari expressed hope that the Road Trans-

port and Safety Bill 2015 would be passed in the Budget session itself. The new Road Safety Bill seems more than necessary in India. It is currently still the country with the most dangerous roads in the world. However, beyond road safety, there are major economic issues. Indeed, there is a risk to destroy the public purpose and to protect private interests at the cost of the public exchequer. It would be better if the public transportation system remains under the aegis of the States, rather than under the management of the central go-vernment outsourcing to private firms.

Keywords: road safety bill, road safety authorities, PPP (Public-Private Partnership)

INDIA:ROAD TRANSPORT AND SAFETY BILL UNCOVEREDDunu Roy Analyses from interviews made with India Transport Portal.

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Transport and Safety Bill, the road transport mi-nistry has not managed to bring all state govern-ments on board yet. Moreover, the Bill has been relentlessly opposed by the Trade Unions (TUs) in the public sector Road Transport Corpora-tions (RTC) since its first draft, in September 2014 (2). The TUs are understandably concerned over the potential withdrawal of protection given to the State RTCs from unhealthy competition by private operators.

Nevertheless, Dunu Roy, director of the Hazard Centre and Senior Fellow at the Centre of Public Affairs and Critical Thought, Shiv Nadar Univer-sity, warns against the drawbacks of such a Bill. According to Roy, the Road Transport and Safety Bill 2015 seeks to change the entire structure of the sector, under the innocent garb of ‘safety’. To support his argument, he takes the case of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corpo-ration (MSRTC), which currently has a fleet of 23,500 buses, with 1.2 lakh employees on 17,000 routes, carrying 70 lakh passengers every day. Several recent studies demonstrate the extent to which the MSRTC has been a dependable mode of transportation for over 65 years, particularly helpful to passengers in rural areas. Yet despite fulfilling a public purpose, the MSRTC is facing important challenges from the private sector but also a high tax burden on it – as the Maharashtra State government is unwilling to protect it any longer. In addition, the MRSTC’s facilities need to be improved to ensure its competitiveness against the private sector; this seems difficult, even impossible, without the State government support. The MRSTC case illustrates the current situation of States RTCs in India.

The proposed Bill is said to be “expedient in the public interest that the Union should take road transport under its control”. However, Dunu Roy

“the Road Transport and Safety Bill continues

to follow these failed ideas in the name of ‘safety’”

-Dunu Roy

INDIA: ROAD TRANSPORT AND SAFETY BILL UNCOVERED2



rightly points out that it was the same argument given for the States’ takeover of private transport in the 1930s. Indeed, in the light of the arbitrary ways of private transporters, the Nizam of Hyde-rabad took over the whole transport system of the region under his rule in 1932.

The Bill would be regulated by two bodies: the National Road Safety and Vehicle Regulation of India and the National Road Transport and Multi-modal Coordination – respectively shortened to the Safe Authority and the Coordination Autho-rity. Surprisingly, these two regulating bodies would have both the same organisational struc-ture as well as the same objective of: “eliminating practices that are adverse to transportation safety, road safety, and innovation and adoption of new technology”. However, their assigned functions should be different.

In the proposed Bill, the Coordination Autho-rity – designated by Roy as ‘Big Brother’ – is said to “plan, develop and coordinate multi-modal, integrated, safe, sustainable and efficient transport systems”; “improve the environmental performan-ce”; and “promote economic prosperity”. Through “global competitiveness, productivity, efficiency”, the Coordination Authority will “enhance eco-nomic vitality” through; and promote “integrated land use”.

However, this entity would also “design and implement an Electronic Road Crash and Offences System”; enable “the submission of data on road crashes and offences ... electronically”; facilitate “collection of uniform standardised information”; and specify “protective gear and conspicuity requi-rements”. Roy thus argues that “a series of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) that entails huge profits in the supply of electronic sensors, television cameras, smart cards, chips, computers, relaying

and processing equipment, control software, and consultancies – all of which will be bankrolled by public funds.” Therefore in the name of safety, the establishment of such a Bill would involve enormous governmental spending, which would not necessarily improve road safety in India but rather enrich private companies.

The Safety Authority has been appointed to re-gulate the licensing of drivers, the manufacture and registration of all motor vehicles as well as standards for road safety, infrastructure and traffic control. It is also in charge of facilitating not only safe and sustainable use of the road transport system but also to ensure the safety of vulnerable road users. Nonetheless, Dunu Roy questions “why such a ‘safety’ authority should also be asked to monitor public-private par-tnership schemes, promote new vehicle technolo-gy, as well as function as an ‘economic regulator for the purposes of developing a framework to guide the determination of costs of safety equip-ment to be installed in motor vehicle’ is a bit of a mystery.”

Moreover, according to several studies, pre-vious PPP models around the Net Cost Model undertaken in several sectors - including the transport system - have allegedly been terrible failures. For instance, Swamy and Patel of the Ahmadabad-based Centre for Excellence in Ur-ban Transport (3) (2014) demonstrate that out of 11 bus-based transit projects involving priva-te companies, eight have either been closed or shut down early while the remaining three had suffered no system expansion since the incep-tion of the initial project. Therefore this leads Dunu Roy to argue that: “the Road Transport and Safety Bill continues to follow these failed ideas in the name of ‘safety’, bringing in a series of measures that will not only completely destroy


About India Transport PortalFounded in 2010, India Transport Portal (ITP) is a leading independent and analysis hub, whose particularity is to bring together academics, experts, business people and public authorities. This platform gathers and involves specialists from different fields on key issues with regard to transportation challenges in India.More on www.indiatransportportal.com

About Dunu RoyDunu Roy is Senior Fellow at Centre of Public Affairs and Critical Thought (CPACT), Shiv Nadar University and also associated with the Hazards Centre.

1. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/189242/1/9789241565066_eng.pdf 2. http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=109649 3. http://cept.ac.in/center-for-excellence-in-urban-transport-coe/research

the ‘public purpose’ that is embedded in the SRTCs, but extract more revenue through centralisation of what has been a State subject. The ‘private interest’ will be protected at the cost of the public exchequer.”

Thus, it may be preferable to concentrate the Union budget – as initially allocated to the different measu-res of the proposed Bill mentioned above - on impro-ving the public transportation system and facilities. According to Roy, it seems that the public transporta-tion system should remain under the aegis of the Sta-tes, rather than under the management of the central government outsourcing to private firms.

“the ‘private interest’ will be protected at the cost of the

public exchequer”

-Dunu Roy




Road transport india safety bill dunu roy itp jan 2016

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