Have you been noticing the maddening Guwahati traffic. This city has no rules for driving, parking, walking or even standing.
No where in India ( any smart city) shall you find vehicles to right, vehicles to left, vehicles behind all in a sea of vehicles. To top it all, pedestrians often smartly raise an arm and cross the road when the signal has just turned green and you have started driving after a few minutes of waiting.
The question here is, why is everyone in such a rush? If you are maintaining a decent distance from the vehicle ahead of you why others barge in from another lane. If you are taking a left turn with your flasher blinking, why does a two wheeler cross you on your left and you thump with a adrenaline pumped heart beat.
With new flyovers, road widening lighting and policing nothing appears to ease traffic. It’s just perhaps the mind set of our people. Unless we have the time and attitude to be patient nothing will change. Let’s do some teaching of decency to our comrades. If even a small fraction of our educated people start a venture obviously many will benefit from. Every car/ two wheeler please be polite and patient. By crashing traffic rules and creating chaos on the road either by rash driving or irresponsible parking you are challenging your own peace of driving.
Since our roads are narrow and population is high it’s all the more important to work in symbiosis to make life easier by following rules. Unless our drivers, pedestrians, slow vehicles are willing to change their mindset from gatecrashing to civilised civic rules followers nothing can change.
A class of educated people sit together to frame civic rules and some talk about developed countries and their facilities. But the reality is no country can progress unless citizens have it in their mindset to abide by rules with no second thought.
Parking is an etiquette. Driving a fancy vehicle but parking irresponsibly reveals your uncivilised crude true nature.
It’s not any authority who can set this right. It’s us, YOU and ME who have to soak it in us that “this is our city and it’s our individual responsibility to make life liveable”
Dr Madhumita Priyadarshini Das