{"id":6224,"date":"2017-08-10T15:01:07","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T09:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=6224"},"modified":"2017-08-10T15:01:07","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T09:31:07","slug":"down-to-earth-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/down-to-earth-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"Down To Earth : Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Table of Contents<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>What&#8217;s your view of the road?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The media and the republic<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>What&#8217;s your view of the road?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Page \u2013 3<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Intro<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Stockholm, roads are designed first for the people and then for cars.<\/li>\n<li>In Delhi, we hesitate stepping on the road even at a zebra-crossing because of the fear that car would not stop and would run down.<\/li>\n<li>This insecurity stems from the fact that Indian roads are not made for walking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Other differences<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Stockholm, the pavements are also low. It makes for effortless walking.<\/li>\n<li>In Delhi, the pavements are high. It takes some effort to step onto them, making it difficult for all, and not just the old and the disabled, to move on foot.<\/li>\n<li>The reason given is if pavements are low, people will park their cars on it.<\/li>\n<li>But that is because we do not enforce regulations for illegal parking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Who has the right of way, cars or pedestrians? <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This is where there is difference between Stockholm and Washington DC.<\/li>\n<li>In Washington, as compared to Delhi, you are in heaven as a walker.<\/li>\n<li>From the moment, you get off a train or a bus you will find pavements, mostly accessible and connected, till you walk to your home, office or any other destination.<\/li>\n<li>The city is walkable but with a difference.<\/li>\n<li>In Washington, one has to wait for long for the traffic signal to change before you can cross the road.<\/li>\n<li>If there is no signal and only a zebra-crossing, then cars don\u2019t respect the walker. They let you pass, but with a grimace.<\/li>\n<li>Worse, when you cross the road, it is also when cars turning right or left also cross the same road.<\/li>\n<li>There is no right; it is a privilege.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How has Delhi changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In Delhi, when our streets were not roads, we could cross them. There was chaos, mixed traffic, everything on the street, but also safety for women because of numbers.<\/li>\n<li>The street was for walking and even talking. But then we moved to roads.<\/li>\n<li>The roads were designed for the efficient movement of just one kind of traffic: cars.<\/li>\n<li>As cars spilled over more space had to be created. This space came from footpaths. Delhi sacrificed its walking spaces.<\/li>\n<li>Same thing is happening all over India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Width of road<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Another difference between Stockholm and Washington is the width of the road.<\/li>\n<li>In Stockholm, roads are not highways. Cities are meant for easy movement.<\/li>\n<li>In Washington, road widths are huge. It feels as if highways cross the cities. This means as the light turns white for pedestrians, it requires running to cross.<\/li>\n<li>In Delhi, we are now building in such a manner that highways transect our cities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Question of public transport<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If we are not able to walk, we cannot really build a vibrant public transport network.<\/li>\n<li>Today, the Delhi metro\u2014efficient and clean\u2014would be a choice of transport.<\/li>\n<li>The only part of my city that has footpaths is where nobody walks.<\/li>\n<li>In this part of Delhi, called Lutyens\u2019 Delhi, where the government and the powerful live, the footpaths gleam.<\/li>\n<li>But just imagine, they are made with granite and polished so that you cannot walk. Or possibly for the powerful people to roll down the windows of their bullet-proof cars and feel good about their modern city.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is the idea of a road?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The trouble is that we are lost between these worlds, where walking works because we are poor and walking works because they are rich.<\/li>\n<li>We need to cross this road, and for this we need to rethink our view of the road itself.<\/li>\n<li>On the one hand is the road\u2014most frequently captured in photographs from the US or now even China and India\u2014where cars move bumper-to-bumper. There is no diversity of vehicles. Few motorcycles, fewer buses and non-existent cyclists and pedestrians.<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand is the picture of a street in African cities or any smaller Indian city, where everything is moving side by side. Here people walk, cycle and take para-transit systems like auto-rickshaws. All side by side. This is seen as the chaos we would like to get rid of as we get rich, modern and successful.<\/li>\n<li>But a chaotic road carries more people and is, therefore, a much more cost-efficient instrument for mobility than the car-filled road.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>The media and the republic<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Page &#8211; 66<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There was a story doing rounds a few days earlier which trajected how many tribal villages are putting out notices at entry points, debarring \u201coutsiders\u201d from entering inside.<\/li>\n<li>It gives a message of some kind of collapse of Indian sovereignty and tries to analyse the development in the context of recent lynching of few outsiders as \u201cchild lifters\u201d in Jharkhand.<\/li>\n<li>There is also a case of a former governor of Maharashtra who was asked by a tribal village to seek permission from the gram sabha before entering its geographical boundary.<\/li>\n<li>There are hundreds of such villages in India that have declared themselves as \u201crepublics\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How to view this?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This is not to challenge Indian sovereignty but to assert the right to self-governance.<\/li>\n<li>The fifth and sixth schedules of the Indian Constitution give tribal communities the right to self-governance.<\/li>\n<li>If these provisions are strictly adhered to, these villages would be behaving like powerful republics. And this is central to tribal society and economy.<\/li>\n<li>These village republics are a legacy of India\u2019s glorious past of village self-governance that Mahatma Gandhi propagated as models of governance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Constituent Assembly debates on the matter<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>S Radhakrishnan<\/strong>, while asking for a governance system based on existing village republics, narrated an incident: \u201cWhen a few merchants from the north went down to the south, one of the princes of the Deccan asked the question: \u2018Who is your king?\u2019 The answer was, \u2018Some of us are governed by assemblies, some of us by kings.\u2019\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How and Why British destroyed this traditional polity structure?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>So strong were these republics that the British Empire tried to exclude them from their dominion, after years of effort to control them.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe village communities are little republics, having everything that they can want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts,\u201d wrote <strong>Charles Metcalfe to the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1832.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Probably threatened by Metcalfe\u2019s assessment and the humiliation of the 1857 mutiny, the village republics were subjected to systematic dosages of government control till they lost relevance.<\/li>\n<li>First, they weakened the institution by taking over villages\u2019 traditional administrative and legal powers.<\/li>\n<li>Even then they could not wipe out the traditional institutions. They failed because they had to fight the whole society in each and every village.<\/li>\n<li>Ultimately, they withdrew from some tribal areas and called them excluded areas.<\/li>\n<li>Later, the Indian Constitution codified these republics and their rights.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The news headline dotted is like a reflection of contemporary ignorance of history of natural resources and how it dictated governance models that did justice to locals.<\/li>\n<li>Tribal villages continue to be treated like centres of resource procurement to fuel our economy, just like the colonial times.<\/li>\n<li>Conflicts over resources in tribal areas are symptomatic of the same exploitative rule prevailing even today.<\/li>\n<li>But hundreds of villages sticking to their age-old governance models is a sign that there is hope for ending the continuing British legacy.<\/li>\n<li>It is in no way a \u201cnuisance\u201d as the article quoted a police officer. Rather, these villages should be celebrated as right holders of the Indian republic\u2019s impressive constitution.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Table of Contents What&#8217;s your view of the road? The media and the republic What&#8217;s your view of the road? Page \u2013 3 Intro In Stockholm, roads are designed first for the people and then for cars. In Delhi, we hesitate stepping on the road even at a zebra-crossing because of the fear that car&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/down-to-earth-summary\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Down To Earth : Summary<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":3533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/newspaper.jpg?fit=1000%2C500&ssl=1","views":{"total":169,"cached_at":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}