In the blog “Road Safety: Who is responsible for it?” I had highlighted the accident rates are spiralling every year and had reached its peak in 2008. The year 2008 data showed a 1.5 time increase in the number of accidents and 5 times increase in the number of car accidents in the city.

Analysing the total accidents from 2005-2010 shows that 24 arterial roads in the city account for 47% (12400) of the total reported road accidents in the city with the Inner Ring Road, Anna Salai, E.V.R.Salai and Thiruvotiyur High Road being the leading accident hotspots as 21% of the total accidents in the city takes place on these roads. The following table shows a list of roads with the number of accidents and the affected parties.

Source: RTI Traffic Police Chennai

A further analysis reveals that pedestrians and two wheelers together form 73% of the total affected people in a road accident. It also shows that the bulk of car accidents take place on these arterial roads as it accounts for 54% of the total car accidents in the city.

Source: Ananlysis of RTI based on data received from Traffic Police Chennai

The question arises is what causes these accidents? The arterial roads have several signals at almost all important junctions but still it continues to be a nightmare for people. What infrastructural facilities could be installed to reduce accidents in these spots? What precautionary measures are being taken to mitigate accidents in these areas?

The corporation has big plans of making a world class city by widening roads and cruising traffic at a high speed. High speed causes reckless driving resulting in accidents. Every day the newspaper reports road accidents in the city and the majority of them are due to the negligence of the driver, over-speeding and overtaking. The statistics above reveals that pedestrians and the two wheelers are most vulnerable to these accidents. Thus it is necessary to take a stock of pedestrian infrastructure and the causes leading to accidents involving them. India has the highest mortality rate 8.7 people die per hundred thousand population and fourteen per ten thousand vehicles.

How do we account for the loss of precious human resource to this cause of death? A study by the Planning Commission estimates the social costs of road accidents in India at 3% of the GDP. Imagine spending this money on infrastructure which could mitigate this situation. Precaution is better than cure and the government should keep this in mind before spending further on this infrastructure.

Roshan Toshniwal

On the eve of World Heritage Day, let’s remember and commemorate the architectural and cultural spaces in Chennai. The city of Chennai is actually a cluster of several old settlements, with each one having distinct histories and important landmarks.

In places like Fort St. George and in Egmore, the British built several administrative and institutional buildings in the Indo-Saracenic style using a variety of materials like exposed red bricks, pillars made of rough granite, and inlays of marble and ivory. The city also has beautiful traditional south Indian temple architecture with large gopurams, intricately carved shikhars, and temple tanks which serve as a recharged pool of surface water for the entire community. These temples can be seen in the older settlements like Mylapore, surrounded by the homes of Brahmins during earlier eras. Unlike North India the mosques in Chennai are smaller and are very different. For example, the Thousand Lights mosque is a cream coloured, multi-domed mosque unlike the traditional single domes in the north. The Dutch settlement in Pulicat, and Portuguese constructions like the Santhome Basilica display completely different elements of Western architecture. From traditional to Indo-saracenic, Colonial, Classical, Gothic, Romanesque and other architechtural styles, Chennai has a diverse range to offer.

A walk down the memory lane: revisiting the past

Cities like Ahmedabad, Surat, and Lucknow have begun heritage walks for residents and tourists.  Can Chennai also similarly replicate and restore its own pieces of history and showcase them to the world?  After the restoration of Senate House by INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), Rippon building and the Victoria Public Hall are now being restored. But is this enough? One problem is that Chennai’s heritage is spread all over the city, making it less amenable to a walking tour than the clusters of buildings in the other cities.

But the main problem is that the CMDA (Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority) is still in the long process of identifying heritage buildings to compile a list of the city’s protected structures while the conservationists are fighting legal battles to protect them from being demolished, sometimes by the government itself. A mass protest by the students and activists saved the Queen Mary’s college, where the then chief minister J.Jayalalitha wanted to build the new Secretariat. Today, the Bharat Insurance building on Mount Road owned by LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) and Gokhale Hall on Armenian Street are saved only because of heritage enthusiasts who have been waging a battle in court.

Though the government made an announcement in October 2010 about finalising a heritage bill, it is feared that it may not see the light. Meanwhile, the CMDA can take a decision to demolish old buildings which are not covered by the Archaeological Monument Act.

Following are some of the heritage buildings in the city:

We need to protect, promote and create awareness amongst us about our glorious heritage which showcases the city’s inherent charms. Please help us create a list of heritage buildings which can be seen as the public face of this city.

Roshan Toshniwal

Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was implemented in 1999 by the Government of India to achieve universal rural sanitation coverage by 2012. The community-led, demand-driven approach of this programme seeks to achieve not only 100 percent open defecation free communities but also broader environmental sanitation objectives such as promotion of improved hygiene behaviors and solid/liquid waste management.

After more than a decade of its implementation, a report by Water and Sanitation Program assesses and analyses this flagship programme on the basis of primary and secondary data on the TSC to arrive at an understanding of the processes, outputs and outcomes at a national level and across the states. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the report.

Figure 1 indicates the progress made by TSC so far. TSC is currently being implemented at scale in 606 districts of 30 states/Union Territories (UTs). After sluggish progress in the 80s and 90s, rural sanitation coverage (individual household latrines) nearly tripled from 22 per cent in 2001 to 65 per cent in 2010. These are the same years when TSC has been in operation across all states in India.

Figure 1: Rural Sanitation Coverage in India

However, national performance aggregates conceal significant disparities among states and districts when it comes to the achievement of TSC goals. The following figure speaks for itself:

Figure 2: How are States Performing on the Total Sanitation Campaign?

While the rating for the worse performing state is as low as 15 per cent DN Haveli, it is 88 per cent for the best performing state of Kerala.

These final aggregated scores for each state are based on multiple indicators – input, output, process and outcome indicators. Let’s have a look at the state of Tamil Nadu and discuss one of these indicators:

Figure 3: How much have states spent out of TSC funds?

Tamil Nadu has been able to utilize only 58 per cent of the total allocated funds so far even though TSC’s implementation phase is nearing its end. At present, the rural sanitation coverage for Tamil Nadu is 70 per cent (from Figure 2) which is a lot better than other states but perhaps, better utilization will make the overall ranks for Tamil Nadu better. Better spending will inevitably have positive spillover effects on the overall performance of the state.

Another interesting graph in the report is regarding the household toilet construction pace – current and required. Apparently, Tamil Nadu’s current construction capacity is 1288 toilets per day against the required capacity of 3109 toilets per day in order to achieve 100 per cent coverage by 2012. The following figure reflects the same:

Figure 4: Household Toilet Construction Pace – Current and Required

Finally, given the current and annual growth rate in coverage, India will attain complete coverage in individual household toilets by 2018.

Figure 5: Country and States Achieving Universal Sanitation (Household) Coverage (Year Wise)

The above graph indicates that Tamil Nadu, among other states, is lagging behind even though is one of the few states which show higher overall ranks for rural sanitation coverage.

More than 5.5 crore household toilets still need to be constructed – 3.1 crore APL and 2.4 crore BPL. Currently, India, on an average, constructs 29,247 toilets per day. However, India needs to construct more than 76,498 household toilets per day in the next two years to achieve 100 percent coverage which means doubling its efforts. How do we do it?

References: https://www.wsp.org/wsp/sites/wsp.org/files/publications/WSP_India_TSC_Report_Vol_1_Press.pdf?

- Somya Sethuraman

While WHO indicates  road accidents as the 10^th largest cause of deaths in the world, India has the highest number of road accident deaths and Chennai (including suburbs) has the second highest recorded number of fatalities in the country after Delhi. The increase in vehicular population coupled with bad road infrastructure and the absence of a strict traffic policy, leads to accidents many of which are fatal in nature.

To deal with rising accidents the state government approved a road safety policy in 2007 at district level commissioning the district collector to promote road safety, prepare road safety plans with special attention to accident prone spots/ stretches, maintenance of road, accident analysis etc.

The traffic police is constantly pressurised to monitor and facilitate the road users besides enforcing the regulation. As the accidents are caused due to carelessness of the motorists; and implementing precautions to ensure road safety costs money the government decided to levy a road safety tax. Before August 2009 the road safety fund was spent from the government’s treasury as there was no stipulated tax or source of revenue to expend on road safety. This is one-time tax collected during the registration of the vehicle by the RTO (Regional Transport Office) and varies from Rs 250 to Rs 2500.  The collection between August 2009-January 2010 amounts to about Rs 28 crore. (T.Ramakrishnan, 2010)

The RTO comes under the office of Transport Commissioner who is also the Road safety commissioner and is responsible to co-ordinate periodically with all the agencies involved in the road safety committee. The Road safety commissioner along with the committee is responsible to allocate funds to different agencies based on the budget that each department sends, in order of priority of functions each needs to devolve.

The enforcement of traffic rests with the traffic police and building and maintenance of road infrastructure in urban areas is dealt by the corporation and the highway department (read our previous blog “Road services and maintenance: under whose purview does it fall?”). It is the Road safety commissioner’s role to bridge the gap between different agencies.

Although the policy note highlights the mechanisms to reduce accidents by 20% in 2013 keeping the base year as 2006, the statistics below shows no signs of change and has remain stagnant for the past two years. The following analysis and statistics are based on the reply of a RTI filed to the Chennai traffic police and has some discrepancies.

Source: Chennai Traffic Police RTI

The table above indicates the categories and the number of accidents from 2006-2009. It shows that though the rate of fatal accidents to the total accidents has reduced, their numbers remain constant.

Source: Chennai Traffic Police RTI

The above statistics shows that although the number of accidents increased in 2008, the number of affected people have remained constant. Amongst the affected parties men account for 80% of all the accidents and the pedestrians and two-wheeler are the most affected of all the parties. The table below indicates reduction of accidents involving cyclists, while accidents involving people travelling in cars and buses have increased. But the most affected are the pedestrians and the people travelling on two wheelers as they together form 60% of the affected parties.

Source: Chennai Traffic Police RTI

The Tamil Nadu state traffic planning cell reports that around every third person who dies due to a road accident is a pedestrian. It can be argued that the accidents involving pedestrians is caused due to lack of appropriate pedestrian infrastructure and the government is spending very little money in ensuring safety of the pedestrian. The budget allocated for pavements in the 2010-11 budgets of the corporation of Chennai was Rs.45 lakh, where all the zones except zone X have been allocated Rs. 5 lakh each.
Is this fund sufficient for building enough pedestrian infrastructures to ensure their safety? Don’t the prevailing conditions demand a policy, or a bill to ensure adequate allocation of pedestrian facilities and define the rights of the pedestrian on the road?

Roshan Toshniwal

Of late, I have been working very closely with the residents of Urur/Olcott Kuppam (a fishing hamlet located just north of Elliots beach) trying to facilitate the creation of a community map that documents how they use the coastline for their livelihood, recreation and cultural activities. In the established literature, this technique of mapping is commonly known as ‘participatory mapping’ and is contended to be a tool for empowerment that is rapidly gaining prominence (Chambers 2006, see for instance Gessa et al 2008).

Searching the internet to find examples of successful projects from around the world, it so happened that a few hits that returned suggested that community mapping had been banned in Malaysia! Completely intrigued, I found a blog entry on the subject which said that following a landmark court victory (where a village map was the key piece of evidence used to prove customary rights of communities living in Rumah Nor) the Malaysian government had passed a ‘Land Surveyors Bill 2001’, which basically allows only government appointed officials to make maps!
(for more please see http://www.nativemaps.org/node/1715)

How did this kind of map-making, which involved a piece of paper, a few sketch pens and possibly some help from satellite imagery become so powerful that it elicited such a response? This question prompted me to do a little research and I found a brilliant book called ‘Rethinking the power of Maps’ by Denis Wood, which helped shed a little light on the subject. The following section is informed primarily by his insights on the subject.

What are maps?
Although unaware of a definition, all that I knew about maps were that it was used to show where things are (recalling what I had learnt in school!). That is, it represented what was in an area spatially and was sorted based on particular themes (political maps show states and capitals, physical maps show natural features).

This seems to be in line with common understandings of maps if we take into account figure 1 which is a ‘word cloud’ generated using Jonathan Feinberg’s ‘wordle’ algorithm, out of all the words in the 321 definitions of the word ‘map’ collected from 1649 to 1996 (definitions compiled by J.H. Andrews, see Andrews 1996, also see http://makingmaps.net/2008/11/25/321-definitions-of-map/ and http://www.wordle.net/).

Figure 1

The size of each word is proportional to its frequency in the collection of definitions.
So according to most definitions, maps represent the earth’s surface. But does it really? Wood (2010) begs to differ. Through a historical analysis he notes that the rise in the importance of maps in newly forming states was because officials began to realize that maps helped in giving form to the state. That is, maps had the ability to help construct the state. Talking about the reason behind newly forming state’s fascination with maps he comments (2010: 33)-
‘…it certainly cannot be the maps putative ability to ‘represent a part of the earth’s surface’. After all, it was the maps that conjured up borders where none had existed (especially well documented for the United States, Russia and Thailand); the maps that summoned unity from chaos (like Japan and Russia); the maps that enrobed the shapeless (as in the case of China)…maps that endowed with form what from the beginning had been no more than a dream… “We no more show what exists” said the maps (even today they say this about the borders of India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, India and China). What maps thereby avoided saying was, “Exists, yes, but only on these maps which, in fact create and affirm their existence,”…maps created and affirmed their own existence, most effectively by hiding their own recent origins…in the state itself’.
From this analysis thinking of maps as merely representations of the earth’s surface is specious. Instead, we need to ask ourselves whose ‘surface’ do most maps represent?

For example, we are familiar with this map of Australia-

Map 1- Political map of Australia

However, how many of us have seen this one?

Map 2-Aboriginal Territories of Australia

Is Melbourne really in Victoria or somewhere in between a mesh of aboriginal territories? Do the smooth lines and clear demarcations of the political map negate the squiggly lines that define the age-old territorial formations of the original inhabitants?

The answer is most likely yes (unless you are an aboriginal inhabitant!).

Thus one needs to consider the power of maps in reaffirming the hegemonic beliefs in a region. This is true even for user-generated maps like google! After all, before someone can begin plotting away on a google map isn’t it a precondition for that person to be Internet savvy?  However, what is also clear in the case of Rumah Nor is that the power of maps can also be used to affirm the presence of alternate subaltern realities (which is precisely what the officials in Malaysia seek to deny!).

Maps need to be viewed with a healthy skepticism that allows the map viewer to move past the common misconception that maps are representations and into a realm where the viewer is aware that what maps ‘represent’ is mostly in thrall of the dominant interests.

References:

Andrews, J H. (2006) What Was a Map? Cartographica, No. 33, Vol. 4, pp. 1-11.

Chambers, R. (2006) Participatory Mapping and Geographic Information Systems: Whose Map? Who is Empowered and Who Disempowered? Who Gains and Who Loses? EJISDC, No. 25, Vol. 2, pp. 1-11.

Gessa, S, Poole, P, Bending, T. (2008) Participatory Mapping as a tool for Empowerment: Experiences and lessons learned from the ILC Network, International Land Coalition.

Wood, D. (2010) Rethinking the Power of Maps, The Guilford Press, New York.

- Siddharth Hande