It isn’t everyday that a state’s draft transport policy is discussed in humour. Well, but that is exactly what happened at ‘Mobilicity – an unconference on sustainable transport’ on November 21st at the Indian Institute of Science. Organised by online community Praja.in and Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP), the event was held to discuss issues on sustainable mobility for Bengaluru.

(From left) Gaurav Gupta, Shankarlinge Gowda, Krishna Byregowda, Praveen Sood. Byataranapura MLA Krishna Byregowda says, "People ask me about BPL cards, drains and street lights. Nobody asks me about transport".

The unconference, a participant-driven discussion with no rules or structure like a usual conference, kick started with a panel discussion on the draft transport policy for Karnataka. The policy has been formed to plan and implement a sustainable transport system. It puts together a basic framework to develop a transport system that can foster economic opportunity, protect the environment and reduce the social disparity in connectivity.

The panelists included Bhaskar Rao, Commissioner for Transport and Road Safety, Vishwanath S, Founder, Rainwater Club, Gaurav Gupta, Managing Director, Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), Shankarlinge Gowda, Principal Secretary, Transport Department, Krishna Byregowda, MLA, Byataranapura constituency, Praveen Sood, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Dr Ashwin Mahesh, Urban Strategy Advisor for the Government of Karnataka and Member of the Agenda of Bengaluru Infrastructure Development (ABIDe) task force, and Prof T G Sitharam, Chairman, CiSTUP. The discussion was moderated by V Ravichandar of Feedback Consulting.

There is a cloud over the draft transport policy. While it has been put together by the state’s Transport Department, it has not been made public. It is all thanks to the ‘Mobilicity’ event that the policy seems to have come out into the open. CiSTUP received a hard copy of the report from the Transport department, which was then scanned and uploaded on the Internet. It is still unavailable in Kannada or to the general public in the form of hard copies. Neither does the Transport department’s website have the draft.

Even as Shankarlinge Gowda said that this is the first time in the country that a state has drafted a transport policy, questions were raised about when, how and who drafted the policy. The Principal Secretary, however, refused to divulge details on the author of the draft and said, “I take responsibility for the draft, it’s the transport department’s”. He did not say when it was drafted, though. Vishwanath retaliated to this saying, “Openness, transparency and public discussion is important. You can’t have a policy where we don’t know who prepared it”. He also questioned the fate of feedback that the public gives to such policies. “We are good at producing policy documents, motherhood and apple pies. But this needs to be translated”, he jibed.

V Ravichandar moderated the discussion on the Karnataka draft transport policy. Transport Commissioner Bhaskar Rao and Rainwater Club Founder S Vishwanath look on. Pic: Vaishnavi Vittal.

The contents of the draft policy itself were met with bouts of laughter, both from the audience and panel members, as they pointed out to inconsistencies in the draft.

Take this for example. Under the ‘State Transport Institutional Structure and Proposed Roles’ section of the draft, it states, “In order to provide expertise in transport in Karnataka, a Centre for Sustainable Transport and Urban Planning (CSTUP) at the Indian Institute of Science could be established to improve institutional capacities in transport in the long run”. Ironically, the ‘CSTUP’ mentioned in the draft is the same ‘CiSTUP’ which partly organised the very event where this policy was discussed. CiSTUP was inaugurated in January 2009.

The moderator Ravichandar remarked on how the policy could do with some improvement but also required more detailing on the governance structure and implementation challenges section. He says the policy does have statements of good intent but “chooses to ‘marginally’ tinker with the current system – I feel we should be overhauling the current system”.

Referring to the draft policy, ABIDE’s Mahesh said that the policy does promise a lot of good things. He explained that policy must reflect choices like what are the kinds of transport or movement we want to promote and what are the kinds of transport or movement we don’t want to promote. Commenting on people’s attitude towards policy, he said, “Many people in the police and general administration say, why do you need a policy? We’ll conform what we do to policy”.

Vaishnavi Vittal is a staff journalist with Citizen Matters.

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