The story of e-rickshaws and their operation in our country reads like a rather familiar, oft-repeated tale that we’ve seen before in other spheres of life. One particular example could be how land is usurped by building illegal religious structures over them, and then using that as a tool to justify the social importance and validity of the structure following its illegal construction. Obviously, in a religion-obsessed country like ours, I don’t need to paint a picture of the frenzied hysteria that ensues every time the authorities attempt to take action against these structures. Now, it seems a similar methodology is being used to justify the use of e-rickshaws on our roads. While the courts have banned the use of these rolling death traps in the absence of effective policy and regulation, the authorities have passed the buck onto the government to take the necessary action. And while a rational person would expect them to be declared illegal, the matter has once again taken a political turn. As expected, slithery politicians of various political hues have realized that there’s a potential vote bank out there that could be of use to them – and have suddenly come out all guns blazing in support of these machines that adhere to no existing laws of the land. Overnight, this has become a question of livelihood – for the thousands of people who depend on these machines for their bread-and-butter, and who’ve invested money into procuring them for a secure future. How noble of the politicians to be so concerned! However, there are a couple of things that are being conveniently overlooked. Firstly, importers of these contraptions illegally brought these machines into the country despite being fully aware that they’re not road legal in India. And while it wasn’t illegal to sell them, they knew very well that they couldn’t be used on the road. Two, from all the examples that I’ve observed closely, all of these Chinese-made contraptions are extremely poorly engineered – if you can insult engineers by using that term to being with that is. They simply look like a hatchet job, put together as cheaply as possible. So, obviously, concerns like driver, passenger or pedestrian safety, and structural integrity were clearly not on the radar for the manufacturers when they set out to design them. The second is the simple fact that, once again, under the garb of social concern we’re seeing a determined campaign from various quarters to legalise something that is patently illegal, dangerous, and bound to be a menace on our roads – which are bursting at the seams as it is. The legalization of these machines – which, till recently, were running without any registration, insurance or requirement of a license to drive them – is only going to lead to more chaos on our roads. Of course, having observed how politics works in our country, in all probability we’ll see a poorly hatched bunch of rules hurried through by the government – which will please both the vote bank and the traders. As a result, all of us honest, tax-paying citizens will once again suffer at the hands of our ‘socially dedicated’ politicians. And what happens if there’s a mishap in which there’s a loss of human life – like what happened recently in Delhi, when a young child was thrown from his mothers’ arms into a pot of boiling oil when she was hit by an e-rickshaw on a crowded road? Oh well, I suppose as far as the politicians are concerned, we can always rely on the fact that we’re a country of 1.3 billion – so, losing one or two here or there is inevitable, isn’t it?
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