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It's not just the cars, buses, trucks, auto-rickshaws, scooters, bicycles or even bullock carts--it's the people, as well. India has more truly congested cities than any other nation, which is not surprising, since it is also the world's second-most populous country, after China.
The world's most congested city happens to lie near India. Male in the Maldives, southwest of the sub-continent, has some 48,007 citizens per square kilometer, not far ahead of its closest rival, Cairo. In nearly every case, urban congestion translates into traffic congestion. And India has its share--and then some.
India is a nation of 1.1 billion people, with an overall density of 336 people per square kilometer. While this density is nearly double that of neighboring Pakistan, it is a little more than a third that of its other neighbor, Bangladesh.
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India's population and its traffic are concentrated within its cities. The contrast between urban and rural India is far more pronounced than in most Western nations. Modernisation in the form of traffic lights, drainage culverts or even paved roads is almost exclusively urban.
Most countries have automobiles, buses, trucks, trains, motorcycles, motor scooters and bicycles, not to mention aircraft. But in addition to this routine urban transportation, and contributing substantially to the congestion, are networks of auto-rickshaws and two-wheelers, as well as bullock carts, hand-pulled rickshaws (disappearing from some urban areas) and an occasional elephant.
Since traffic is well known for moving at the pace of its slowest component, what is amazing is that Indian traffic moves at all. There is a shortage of traffic lights at major city crossroads, and yet somehow people get through in time, but rarely before a combination of shouting in 17 languages and 844 dialects and the performance of amazing courtesies.
The accident rate among cars, however, is the highest in the world. India has about one per cent of the world's cars (some 4.5 million) yet still manages to kill over 100,000 people in traffic accidents each year. This amounts to 10 per cent of the entire world's traffic fatalities. The US, with more than 40 per cent of the world's cars, creates just 43,000 fatalities.
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There is no clear statistic as to how many auto-rickshaws (a three-wheeled vehicle for hire) and two-wheelers (scooters and motorcycles) operate in India's densest urban areas. Some cities, like New Delhi, have six-passenger motorized vehicles called fat-fat (which describes their exhaust sound). As for two-wheelers, estimates of motorcycles, scooters and bicycles are up to 50 million in India.
India's Bajaj Auto churns out over 2 million two- and three-wheelers a year. "Many Indian companies are dreaming of being world-class," says Sanjiv Bajaj, executive director of Bajaj Auto.
Vehicles in India are distributed somewhat unevenly. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore have 5 per cent of India's population but 14 per cent of its registered vehicles, not to mention millions that are unregistered.
India's vehicles also vary as to their equipment, and this can have dire consequences in terms of the flow of traffic and level of congestion, as well as the number of fatalities. Many trucks, for instance, have no rear-view mirrors. Seat belts and airbags are a luxury, while some trucks drive without brakes on roads that are blessed with an abundance of pot holes, missing fences or barricades, a lack of uniform road signs and poor geometrics at intersections.
Truckers endure "horrendous journeys, sitting on a wooden bench covered with just a bit of foam and traveling across the worst roads you've ever seen," says Jason Taylor, a documenter of India's truckers.
The good news is that many new highways are being constructed (slowly) and old ones repaired (even more slowly). India has embarked on a $50 billion highway program that will add or improve 40,000 kilometers of highways over the next several years. However, while in progress, these improvements tend to increase fatalities in a host of Catch-22 sequences.
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India is a nation that excels in the field of large numbers. There are 40 million shopkeepers (more than any other nation), and the nation is now faced with the threat of an invasion by Wal-Mart Stores. Existing shops and the new supercenters are supplied by battalions of trucks, autos, animal-drawn carts or rickshaws of varying descriptions. The shops and suppliers are densest in the inner cities.
India is poised for increased population growth and increased use of automobiles and trucks. By the year 2050, the United Nations Population Division estimates, Bangladesh will be confronting a level of 1,687 people per kilometer.
Unless India expends a great amount of money and thoughtful planning on its infrastructure, the nation and its people will find themselves confronted by ever-greater traffic congestion and increased fatalities.