The Rules of Disorder

Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari’s plan to incentivise Indian drivers to behave on the roads seems a reasonable one. The ministry is working on a system under which violations will lead to points being deducted from a driver’s licence or a vehicle’s registration. Don’t violate rules and you might get benefits like cheaper insurance. And yet, the odds of the Indian driver being moved by it are bleak.

For he does only what that truism states: system determines behaviour. Where there is disorder all around you, what are the odds of one solitary strand of order when it comes to driving? Take earlier measures that were meant to make Indian roads civilised. Corruption in enforcement means drivers don’t fear the law. Technology was expected to fix that by minimising human interface. A CCTV would detect a car jumping a signal, a server would determine the address and phone number of the violator, and he would automatically be fined. But what happened was typical of such ambitions. In Mumbai, a large number of CCTVs are defunct. There is an absence of personnel to monitor them. Drivers know which ones work, so they know where to break the rules.

Even when the technology worked, an inventive loophole opened. The bribe is not paid to escape the violation, but to escape the fine. Drivers have ratcheted up enormous amounts to their names through CCTV captures. But occasionally, they get caught on the roads by a policeman who takes a bribe to ignore those fines.

Why would drivers on the roads have respect for rules and regulations when the government itself does not have it? In Indian cities, roads can be left dug up for years for an infrastructure project because different agencies can’t coordinate.

In societies that adhere to rules, the government shows the way.

The points system will exist on paper, and its fallout will be in imaginative new ways of gaming it. There will be some benefit to the minority who painfully and carefully follow rules, but very little will change around them when they drive on the road.