It has to be the courts again. This time it is the Calcutta high court which has questioned the state government?s efforts to reduce the rate of accidents on city streets. This is one more example of administrative failure; the terrifying increase in fatal and near-fatal accidents is not a recent phenomenon. This year?s fatality count overtook last year?s by November. The court has homed in on the three most glaring, but eminently correctable, problems. Traffic mismanagement is one. More specifically, the court has asked what steps the government is taking against rash drivers of schoolbuses. Equally important is its suggestions about the payment system of private buses, because the majority of accidents are caused by private buses and minibuses racing one another to derive maximum commission from the sale of tickets. Monthly salaries and identity cards for drivers and helpers have been advised. Bad roads and occupation of pavements by hawkers are the other two issues the court has raised. Pedestrians are usually caught helplessly between aggressive drivers and unnavigable pavements. It would seem that the right of way has been divided up among racing vehicles, hawkers? wares, malingering road repairers and enormous vats of spilling garbage.

The high court has gone to the root of the practical problem, but there are allied aspects to it that must also be addressed. The law for traffic violations needs to be sharpened, so that drivers are actually made to pay for their crimes. This would also mean that policing the roads has to be far more stringent. Ironically, it is not just the badness of the roads that is problematic, the improved, widened roads pose an equal threat. Speeding without checks, sometimes in badly maintained vehicles, is a sure recipe for disaster. The whole system of providing licences, whether to taxi drivers or to drivers of autorickshaws, has to be scrutinized and overhauled. Corruption can kill. Nothing exemplifies this better than the frightening lack of safety on Calcutta roads.