Case Study - VI

The Nobel laureate doesn’t own a car but rides a bicycle! Said the Indian newspapers when I
was thrust into the limelight a few years ago. Even as children, we used our bicycles to get to
school and meet friends in my hometown of Vadodara. Except for the 12 years I lived on Long
Island, I had simply continued that lifestyle in America and England. Here in Cambridge, the
bicycle is the most common mode of transportation. My cycling to work is a pleasure, not a
burden. It invigorates me on my way to work and relieves me of stress on the way home. So my
immediate reaction was one of puzzlement: Why did the Indian media consider my cycling
remarkable?

I should have known better. When I visited Vadodara in 2005 for the first time in two decades, I
had the naïve idea of renting a bicycle and checking out my old haunts. But in those two
decades, Indian cities had exploded. Their infrastructure has not been able to keep pace with the
change, so they are choking with traffic, making it extremely hazardous for cyclists. This in
turn has made bicycles all but disappear, so that only the poor who cannot afford a motorised
vehicle generally use one. At my old university, I found that nearly all the bicycles at the stands
on campus and in the student hostels had been replaced by motorcycles.

“India in Reverse” was the headline of a recent editorial in The New York Times on the state of
the Indian economy. But it could equally apply to its vision for cities. Ironically, just when
cities like London, New York and Paris have realized the errors of the past and are now
encouraging cyclists by providing special bike lanes and routes and easily rentable cycles that
can be picked up and dropped off at numerous points, cities like Kolkata have taken to banning
cyclists from their main roads. The official excuse is that a mixed traffic is a danger to cyclists.
However, the solution is not to ban cyclists but to make the streets safer for them and to provide
reasonable alternative routes for them.

When motorways are built in Britain, they are certainly off limits to cyclists. But they ensure
that bicycle routes are not disrupted by motorways, even to the extent of building special
cycling bridges over them. Bicycles take up little space and many more of them can be
accommodated on roads. They are cheap, impose little wear and tear on the road, have a lower
dependence on increasingly expensive foreign oil and do not contribute to the increasing
pollution in Indian cities. The exercise they provide could help counter the huge increase in
obesity and diabetes. I suspect that the indifference or even contempt towards cyclists has its
roots in the increasing segregation of the well-off from the rest of India.

The prosperous classes have effectively seceded from the masses. They live in their own private
bubbles, never encountering public spaces let alone the public. They go from their home into
their car from which they leave their gated compound, only to emerge in an equally private
space, whether it is their place of work or their club, a restaurant or a friend’s home. They never
encounter the general public except as people to serve them as domestic servants, waiters, shop
attendants, etc. They only observe the streets through the windows of an air-conditioned car, or
perhaps from a speeding motorcycle. They certainly do not bicycle.

By abandoning the larger society, the well-off in India are impoverishing themselves. They may
live in luxurious, well-equipped homes, but their world has shrunk dramatically into a self-
made prison. In contrast, my daily life is far better than anything most very rich people in India
could afford. I can step outside my modest but comfortable home and walk through beautiful
meadows into town, where there are numerous gardens, riverbanks and other public spaces, all
clean and pleasant.

I encounter millionaires, academics and blue-collar workers all enjoying themselves. Their
enjoyment does not preclude mine and we have all become wealthier by sharing our city. That
kind of life cannot just be bought but takes broad-based civic sense and participation. Indian
cities continue to expand at a tremendous rate. To provide a decent environment for the millions
who inhabit them, governments will not only have to learn from the experience of the West but
also not make the same mistakes. Promoting cycling and other energy-efficient and clean
transportation should be an essential ingredient of city plans, whereas making cycling more
difficult is a giant step backwards.

Excerpt from a writing by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, the Noble Laureate in Chemistry.