THE PEDESTRIAN IN INDIA - A CATASTROPHE- WELCOME TO ALL INNOCENT TOURIST

Long time ago a wrote already a post about the unbelievable situation of the sidewalks in India, but now I did find a more neutral publication from

Indrajit Hazra , Hindustan Times
I may have to manoeuvre myself through tributaries of urine and rows of shacks and stalls — and, on so many occasions, walk through people’s ramshackle living rooms — in Calcutta. But even with its village’s cape, Calcutta still makes it as a city because a person is able to walk from (almost) any point to any other if he wants to do so.
In Mumbai, walking is not confined to strolling in parks or along the sea front to stay fit. People walk there also to simply move — aimlessly or with a purpose — thus making even that grizzly leaking beast of a city such an attractive conglomeration of spots for bipeds.
Delhi is to pedestrians what garlic is to vampires. Even if the urbane middle-class Delhiite deigns to get down from his E-class or rigged-meter auto-rickshaw, there is no place to walk across vast stretches of the capital city of India. Without the safety and the vantage point of footpaths, we, middle-class residents of India’s only truly cosmopolitan city, are denied the choice available to all modern citizens: walking through one’s own city.
With no mainstream walking culture possible, some of us end up singing dohas to cracklingly crowded and grubby lanes and bylanes in Old Delhi and Chandni Chowk. In other words, Delhi revels in its underbelly without having a belly. Which is why Delhiites opt for Footpath Walking Lite: walking around (mostly in circles) the shopping areas of Connaught Place, Khan Market, South Extension and all those pretend boulevards inside malls that hope to satisfy a bit of our primal metropolitan urge to walk in public spaces amid fellow, anonymous citizens.
The urban phenomenon of footpaths (villages don’t need them) first appeared in Paris with the mushrooming of shopping arcades between the 1780s and 1860s. People started walking away from the dangerous streets with its speeding traffic and mud and mounds into the safety and ‘public privacy’ of the boulevards and sidewalks lined against or near these shops. Thus, an urban activity was born: strolling.
This, in turn, brought about streetlights and public transportation (both of these abundantly in short supply in Delhi 2010). It also gave birth to the urban sophisticate who literally used the city for his pleasures. Charles Baudelaire wrote in the 1890s about the flaneur, the leisurely stroller of cities: “The crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the bird or the sea of the fish. His passion and creed is to wed the crowd.” Not everyone, though, was pleased about footpaths and the new breed of citizens they spawned. Sounding like a future South Dilliwalla, a character in a 1866 French play whined: “Nowadays, for the least excursions, there are miles to go! An eternal sidewalk going on and on forever! This isn’t Athens any more, it’s Babylon!”
But before we get all poetic about the joys that footpaths can bring us, there’s the more prosaic matter of the proposed amendment to the Delhi Police Act, 1978. Jaywalking, defined as the act of a pedestrian illegally or recklessly crossing roads, is something that Delhiites engage in without having a choice on a regular basis. The penalty for jaywalkers is, on paper, Rs 20. The new law, if and when it’s passed, plans to up the fine to Rs 1,000. A bit rich, don’t you think, considering that it’s like punishing a ravenous vegetarian for eating meat when there’s only chicken on the menu?
But then, the proposed law brings hope. If walking along Delhi’s roads really becomes illegal, the authorities will be forced to provide us with proper footpaths. Who knows? The city may get universal streetlights and public transportation too. So thank god for foreigners from Commonwealth countries descending on Delhi in October. They’ll want to walk about town and not only along the grimy bits. And that’s how we’ll wrangle our own footpaths. Hurrah!

ihazra@hindustantimes.com

THE STREET AS EXTENDED BUILDING SITE

Maybe due to missing laws, but I rather think due to negligence and lassez- faire of police almost all building site download the cement, sand, bricks, iron beams and all other stuff needed to build a house on the sidewalks and even till the middle of the road. Even worse once the building is finished, nobody feels responsible to clean the mess. The result you can see in the pictures.

A young boar takes the opportunity to take a bath in the mud created by a leaking water line. Obviously he did not want to be on the picture since he was trying to escape. I am sure if I pass there next weak leak will still be there to the merriment of the boar.

I should not be too hard on the Police, in the Sunday Times of today was written, " NOIDA (this is one of the satellite cities of Delhi, comparable with Gurgaon) POLICE AS NO PHONES OR PETROL FOR PATROL..... Almost all police stations in the two districts have had their phones disconnected years ago for non-payment of the bills. Some station officers have arranged private mobile phones so that police stations can be contacted. The solitary jeep in every police station in Ghaziabad (another satellite city of Delhi) gets a mere 100 l of fuel every month. Another 20 to 25 l can be procured with special sanction of the district police chief."

Of course under these circumstances, police simply has no time to control the mess trying to organize some fuel.

INDIAN SIDEWALKS

If compared to rather boring Western sidewalks the Indian have multicultural and intensive economical use.
This can start with a small grocery shop selling cigarrettes and paan to an elaborated bicycle repair shop having at least a bicycle pump and the flat spanners for removal of a wheel.
Very popular is also the shoe shine and shoe repair in the middle of the sidewalk.
Fruit and flower shops are very common and in Pune I could also admire a fish selling place in the middle of the trottoir.
The most spectacular is without any doubt the love for trees of Indians in the middle of the sidewalk always looking for shadow, resulting in real biotopes covering the complete trottoir. Of course taking all these genius applications into account human being has littarly make a step back and walk on the street.

Biotopic Sidewalks

In there tremendous love for nature and shadow-like places, Indians prefer trees to dominate the sidewalks, taking the extra- tour and competition with cars and other vehicles with a trust only understandable trough pronounced believe on all goddess and deities into account.