Dealing With traffic offenders.

Parking on the footpath.

Vendors hogging the footpath

Bullying auto drivers

Are parts of the great Indian civic society.  We live and survive through it.  The next level of this is– the motorists who break the traffic rules.  Most of the offenders don’t stop when signalled, and then there are few diligent ones who do stop, and get away with the Munna Bhai principle of “naa mera naa tera” he bribes the officer and gets away.

But with emerging sense of anti-corruption both among the guardians of the law and civil society there has emerged a new breed that does not bribe, accepts the challan and usual lack of carrying cash conveniently forget about paying their dues.

The RTO accounts for about 10,000 violations where dues have not been paid. Even if we took at the conservatives of fines at the rate of 500/- we are talking, 50, and 00,000.  Bangalore has come up with one way of tackling this, which is the offender is not fined; they just tow the wrongly parked vehicle and cancel the driver’s license. The offender has to pay up the towing charges to the towing company how much of this is really put into effect I do not know but makes sense.

Hyderabad has opted for another route, if your dues are not paid in a month; license is of course cancelled along with 1000/Rs. fine and month’s rigorous imprisonment. Again the I do not know the efficiency of implementation. What the RTO claims is the number of offenses especially in the Hitech city area has drastically dropped and fines are being paid rapidly.

We have no doubt eradicated capital punishment or even reprimanding from schools yet the civic society refuses to honour a system unless there is the fear of punishment. How do we inculcate a sense of ethics in people?