Recently a group of Progressive Bangaloreans have come together and appealed to the Commissioner of Police to remove all traffic rules, cross road signals and signposts all over Bangalore because, they believed that they are the reasons for accidents and congestion in the city. Does this sound weird to you? Please hold on. This group believes that traffic rules are made by mean police department who want to control people by restricting their freedom. They believe every person has the right to drive however seems right to them and should not be told to conform to rules. The central idea behind this movement is that there are no such things as absolute traffic rules. After all driving is an illusion. This movement is lead by affluent activists, philosophers, scientists, professors, actors, journalists, new age gurus etc., who are also politically influential.
Within days of launching this campaign more than half of the city population has signed the petition on change.org. Police department immediately called the group’s leaders and told them that their assumptions were wrong but, the group’s persistence prevailed. Since the parliamentary elections are in progress, the commissioner was asked by the chief minister to approve their request for the Bangalore city. The city celebrated the ‘ruling’ as the whole nation watched. Now in New Bangalore, anything about traffic is OK, as long as you don’t ‘hurt’ anyone to the best of your definition of hurt. Apparently they believe it is ‘common sense’. Everyone can drive, any vehicle on any side of the road at any speed. No licence, no seat belts, no helmets, no headlights or red lights. You can stop anywhere or park anywhere. Their only rule — though seems self contradicting is, ‘don’t follow any rule’. Many volunteers signed up to help the public during this transition. Since old habits die hard, many continued driving as they use to. Those who intentionally followed the old traffic rules were ridiculed.
Traffic congestion and accidents did not seem to have stopped but, only increased. Airport road travellers were told to plan their time as there will be delays upto a day for the next few days. But everyone is positive, they believed that these delays are natural during transition. A sacrifice that we need to make for a better Bangalore.
After 3 weeks, all the technology companies have made work-from-home mandatory, as people are not able to reach office anymore. Other industries have indefinitely closed operations. Schools have chosen Skype to continue the classes until the commute situation is sorted out. Uber and Ola are at the verge of indefinitely suspending their services in Bangalore as it is not possible to commute. Whereas Swiggy.com and other food delivery apps have seized the opportunity and increased their crew, but unfortunately they were also having problems, as customers are not happy with stale food being delivered. Bigbasket.com also is unable to manage the inventory because of the delay in delivery. Delivery period has increased to almost a week even for basic vegetables and groceries. All the hospitals are full of casualties from road accidents and are unable to take anymore patients. Insurance companies are pressuring the government to roll back this new change as they are not able to cover health and motor insurances.
Meanwhile a new counter movement has sprung-up as there was an uproar from the citizens who were badly affected by this change. They are families who lost their loved ones in accidents, people whose vehicles were damaged, and people who were struggling to get their daily supplies because of this chaos. But the Progressive Bangaloreans movement is everywhere on the social media promising a better city in few days if they cooperate by wiping away the myths of traffic rules and signposts. TV journalists are busy trying to prove that this is in-fact the greatest development in the history of Bangalore in spite the evidence on the contrary. The whole world has believed their story and are planning to implement in they cities.
In Bangalore the crisis has escalated. These people who were exploited due to this change were common people, ironically most of them support the progressive movement when everything is fine. But when they happened to be on the receiving end, they demand for justice. Some went to police, others to politicians and even to judiciary, but there were no answers. Police was not able to take any FIR as there is no law and order system in traffic related matters. They said, What is justice when we have agreed to remove all the traffic rules? Since no one is willing to listen to their plight, these people started writing their horrific stories on social media. One story after another began trending on the internet with the handle #metoo.
Seeing this confusion I spoke to people on both sides to get some understanding on this crisis. Interestingly there was one person who in the morning protested about how inhuman traffic rules were, but the same evening posted stories on how badly people drove. These contradictions may sound weird for few but it seems to be OK for them because everyone has the right to make their own rules.
When the counter movement escalated, when the experiment did not seem to have worked out, and with the pressure from the central government the Progressive Bangaloreans agreed for a roll back but, on few conditions. They still believe that their philosophy “there is no right or wrong way to drive” is still right. The conditions were: (1) Progressive Bangaloreans should rewrite the traffic rules, not the police department. (2) These rules will be just suggestions, but each one can interpret however they want. (3) If someone does not like the way one interprets, they cannot force their interpretation on others. (4) No legal protection for traffic related incidents.
Now currently the Progressive Bangalorean leaders have framed few suggestions but they have not arrived at any conclusions. Even after multiple meetings there is no consensus within themselves. The city has basically come to a state of emergency. Food supply, law and order, education, business etc., has literally come to a halt. The cry for justice is still silenced. #metoo is still trending. Though the city is in a state of emergency, yet the Progressive Bangaloreans continue to promise that everything is getting better.
Can Bangalore be restored to a liveable city again? Can Progressive Bangaloreans save the city? Can their so called rights and freedom philosophy serve justice to their #metoo members? Or should we need to save the city from them and restore coherent traffic system to make us truly live again?
This article was inspired by Steve Turner’s poem “Creed”
