(Above): The Mumbai message is clear — rash driving is met with a term in jail. Calcutta police, however, follow a softer line, educating drivers about what is good for them. Pictures by Fotocorp and Amit Datta

In Mumbai, the message is brutal yet not deterrent enough. In Calcutta, the message is gentle and ineffectual.

Mammoth boards at vital intersections in Mumbai display the number of drunken and rash drivers jailed over the past months, and also the number of people killed in road accidents.

In Calcutta, the display boards are not half as big and the messages not half as meaningful, almost pleading with rogues at the wheel to “drive carefully” or keep the “seat belt on”.

But the result is not very different — the traffic violation graph in both cities is rising steadily, electronic display boards be damned.

There are 30 such display boards across Mumbai, each costing Rs 2 crore. “Besides building awareness on issues like drink-driving, these boards display updates about the traffic situation,” said V.R. Kamble, the joint commissioner of police (traffic).

Despite the writing on the wall — or rather, the boards — the number of people held for driving under the influence of alcohol in the past two months is nearly half the figure for the whole of 2007. The projected count of those arrested for drink-driving is expected to cross 6,000 this year, compared to 2,623 in 2007.

“The constant display has grown awareness. But there is still a long way to go,” admitted Kamble.

Traffic police officers said they were “not discouraged” by the figures. “We have not lost hope, even if people here are not willing to give up driving under the influence of alcohol,” said a traffic officer.

This year, nearly 1,300 people held for drink-driving have had their licences suspended.

“We are not interested in statistics. We are more concerned about reducing accidents on streets. We will continue with our drive,” said Harish Baijal, the deputy commissioner of Mumbai police’s traffic control branch.

The difference in attitude — hitting hard in Mumbai and pussyfooting in Calcutta — is evident from ideation to implementation, if not in the results yet.

The path of gentle persuasion followed by the city’s traffic police is leading them nowhere. Cases of driving without a valid licence, for instance, have risen from 10,746 in 2002 to 28,368 in 2007 and the number of cellphone violations while driving has jumped from 2,626 in 2005 to 4,021 in 2006.

There are three electronic boards in Calcutta (compared with 30 in Mumbai), with some 20 LED display boards hired from the civic body and 14 billboards — all displaying road-safety messages.

“The basic intention is to try and educate the drivers about what is good for them rather than saying you could land up in jail for committing an offence. It’s more about being positive,” explained Manoj Verma, the deputy commissioner of police (traffic).

But do such meek messages stand a chance when even the mean messages of the Mumbai police are not working? Sociologist Prasanta Roy sure doesn’t think so: “You should have messages that drive home a point straight, spelt out in unambiguous terms. The deterrent factor is more pronounced if it hits you straight.”

Verma claimed that the gentle persuasion was working on the “subconscious minds” of drivers and so the effect of the messages could not be “quantified”.

The last word on the effectiveness of display boards came from cabbie Hashem Irani in Mumbai: “The most important message is about traffic jams.”