India is the country with six ministries for different modes of transport, making coordinated decision making and implementation of national plans a distant dream. Comment (200 Words)
Refer - Business Standard
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 5 years
KEY POINTS
· Covid-19 has brought almost the entire world and all forms of transport to a screeching halt. Even non-motorised transport like walking and cycling have been shut down.
· The 2009 Bellagio Declaration on Transportation and Climate Change introduced the concepts of “Avoid, Shift and Improve” to make transport sustainable.
· We have since taken ad hoc measures to reduce transport demand. For example, when Delhi was highly polluted, the government introduced the odd-even scheme to reduce transport emissions, but did not implement this or other measures wholeheartedly.
· There are some 10 million personal vehicles registered in Delhi, of which some 7 million are two-wheelers; only about 3 million are cars.
· The 1980 National Transport Policy Committee report and the 2014 report of the National Transport Development Policy Committee, among others, made a number of recommendations on how to effect a beneficial shift from highly polluting road transport to benign rail transport and even more benign water transport.
· When the Motor Vehicles Act was amended in 2019, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had recommended that the purchase of a second car should not be permitted unless the buyer could demonstrate a private parking space for it. That was an opportunity we missed. The law should now provide for the local body to levy a parking charge for every car parked on the road, and that will yield a substantial revenue to the government for improvements in the transport sector.
· The automobile industry has responded to the government’s decision to introduce improved Bharat VI (EuroVI equivalent) fuel, making it available a year earlier than required. Despite declaring its intention to populate cities with electric vehicles by 2030, there is no comprehensive policy by the government and no decision on the agency that will lead this endeavour. In any case, using the best fuel available in the city may be a better trade-off than converting everything to electricity.
· There is hardly any investment in the institutions required to facilitate transport planning and management in India.
· The responsibility for transport is fragmented between governments and within governments in India, enabled by a Constitution that provides for concurrent responsibilities
· It has taken a virus, the lowest among species, to teach us that a sustainable transport system can and must be evolved, based on "avoid, shift and improve" strategies .
Padala veera venkata satyanarayana 5 years
Sir please mention,, is it a relevant answer or not?
IAS Parliament 5 years
This is not an relevant answer. Try to provide instances where the responsibilities were divided among various ministries. Try to avoid listing out points. Keep Writing.
