By the Editor: Siddharth Sehgal
When I started commuting Delhi Metro from Tagore Garden to Botanical Garden, I paid Rs. 32 for a one way trip that seemed reasonable. Then it costed me Rs. 36 which I thought may be fair for a system carrying the burden of so many people. Now it takes Rs. 45 for one leg of a round trip which I consider to be a robbery in plain sight.
DMRC is slowly turning into an evil corporation portrayed in movies which is greedy, conniving and insensitive to the needs of people it is meant to serve. The excuse of operating cost is simply preposterous. If tickets go up, number of commuters will come down, so how does that cover operating costs. Why DMRC is not sharing the commuter data, it is all meant to hide behind corruption and greed that is fleeced from the ordinary lot. Public plight and agony should be above politics, center and state are just trying to tilt the blame at each other.
The public transportation is meant to be cheap; it has to be so that already congested streets of Delhi can be a little less polluted and clogged. And people from all the layers of society can freely and equally access it. It is a public utility and should remain so, just like Air India it has to be kept afloat if the need be but with a plush Metro Bhawan headquarters near Connaught place; it does not look like DMRC is unable to make its ends meet.
A lot of people like me are completely dependent on Delhi Metro for daily commute to work and out of this dire necessity people will pay whatever DMRC asks them to pay. People will still commute to work and if they cannot afford Delhi metro they will take the public buses or their own vehicles which means more polluted air and unlike fire crackers ban in Delhi, this won’t be a one time deal.
The pollution from industries and vehicles is yet to be addressed and it doesn’t help if Delhi Metro becomes a premium service. Though overcrowded, many a times late, driven by people with bad to horrendous driving habits and without clear management of the traffic during peak hours, the metro still serves a very crucial purpose of carrying the people from one place to other. The DMRC should well remember that it exist for the people not the other way around.
A clean India foresees unpolluted air the people can breathe with!
A comfortable and affordable public transport, catering to a large segment of daily commuters, thereby lessening the private vehicles on the road to the maximum extent, can help ensure fulfilment of this great dream of healthy India!
Rates are increased to fleece the middle class and those that need cheap fares to commute. Little does it pinch the concerned authorities about the burden it lays on people; the uproar about pollution is raised to divert public attention from important affairs..
clean air to breathe and clean roads to walk upon seems to be a far fetched dream!
Seems like insensitivity of the authorities concerned to the so basic an issue as pollution due to the increasing number of vehicles plying on the road across the country, emitting toxic substances contributing to health hazards beyond rectification!