Punishment as a deterrent...

Very often we are treated to debates about the effectiveness of capital punishment & how research has shown that it's not a deterrence, apart from the moral issues. At another end we have the debate on the high fines imposed by the new traffic regulations.

I am no expert, but I firmly believe that the elephant in the room is getting a free pass all thru. The quantum of punishment is not really the issue, but the 'certainty' is punishment can be a major deterrent.

Take a simple offence like signal jumping. If there were a very high chance that you'll be caught, you will not break the law. That is the single biggest reason Indians behave much better abroad than in India. In India the chance that you'll be caught is so low, that it's always possible to take the risk without fear.

Now what is"high" / "low" is something not easy to define. But if somebody were to study the incidence of an offence, and then check how many offenders were caught & punished, the ratio will probably be lower than 5%. Which I think it's extremely low. If the percentage were to be higher, say in the 50s, then only the more fearless would consider breaking the law, but in the 80s, then IMO only the most fearless would.

Now this is not rocket science, is it?

But we seldom hear this aspect being debated in the mainstream.

In India we have another layer to the above problem - corruption. Even if you do get caught, then you can bribe your way out of it. We have all seen this time and again, even in the most High profile & public cases. But more on that later...

Hope departments like the Ministery for Road Transport is sensitised to these issues

When you look at serious criminal offences, our conviction rates are quite low i hear (how low, compared to say developed countries, i dont know). If we don't increase this, our law & order situation is unlikely to improve.

When the Yogi government took over the Police machinery in UP, and there was an increase in the encounter deaths... we heard of stories of how many gangsters out on bail/ those with pending warrants began to surrender voluntarily. The only trigger for their action was them sensing the high likelihood of them being 'encountered'.

This obviously is not the right way to bring down crime rates, but our weak police simply used the easiest way out.

What the Hyderabad police have done is no different.

We are hugely short on law enforcement capacity.

The shortages are very apparent. Everybody on the police forces is grossly over worked. Competence is another issue. Also a significant section is highly corrupt. Add these factors together & we have a disaster in the making.

With all of the above shortcomings, if we look at the judiciary's performace, then what hope can the common law abiding wo/man have in our country?

It's the market share, stupid!

So if we call the low probability of getting caught add the market share of the Indian state, it has to aim to increase it significantly. Considering the state is a Monopoly & the only player in the market, it shouldn't be so hard.

But what the Indian state lacks is basic market data. Being a Monopoly, it believes the market is only as big as it's own share!! 

Perhaps it's time we get in some 3rd party to do the counting and show the real dimensions of the market! That's when the state can start evaluating the performace of its various arms.

This of course difficult to do. Maybe more difficult for criminal offences, but perhaps easier for others like traffic offences or even tax offences. 

It would need participation of some non governmental organisations to make it effective.

Traffic offences are a good place to start, very easy to measure. Technical evidence based, so very little back & forth required for measuring incidence of offence & conviction.

The Mumbai Metro One - Who to blame?

The Mumbai Metro One, which runs from Ghatkopar to Versova, just about 11km long has always been very popular & sees a daily ridership of about 4.5 Lakhs now. Apparently this line has been the fastest of any metro in India to reach the milestone of 250 million riders in 957 days! (wiki)

Having been constructed in one of Mumbai’s most congested corridors, this is not really a surprise.

However given the line is designed to handle 6 coach rakes, but currently runs only 4 coach rakes, the ridership has significant headroom to grow!

But if you were to visit Ghatkopar or Andheri (the 2 main stations on the line), today, you may feel the metro line is already beyond its capacity. That's because both these stations are built in some of the most congested areas of Mumbai, ie in the neighborhood of the respective suburban railway stations.

The situation is so bad that even when the station is handling just one rake at a time, there is not enough space on the platform to accommodate the passengers boarding & de-boarding. Almost every evening the Ghatkopar station also gets flooded with de-boarding passengers & then the operator resorts to jugaad solutions like switching off the escalators to somehow slow down the flow of passengers. Holding passengers on the platform becomes necessary because the concourse is already packed with passengers from the earlier rake. And all this has to be executed with very good coordination by the staff. I dont have any experience of Andheri station, but the situation is unlikely to be much different.

Infact this issue has now even reached the Railway ministry.

The scenario makes me wonder how were safety certificates issued for these stations in the first place. Note that the line is only working at about 2/3^rd of its planned capacity!

Ideally the authorities should have built much much bigger stations at Andheri & Ghatkopar, but for that they would have had to acquire the neighbouring land. Since land acquisition in India, even for public infrastructure projects is fraught with so much litigation and litigation with delays. My guess is that the powers of the time decided to avoid / minimize the litigation & resultant delays by simply shrinking the stations to fit into the space available.

So who is to blame for the current scenario?

• The developers of the line?
• The neighbourhood dwellers who may not have wanted to part with their land?
• The Judiciary, for not being able to rule on these issues quickly?

Deciphering this is quite critical at this juncture. Especially because Mumbai is embarking on a slew of public infrastructure projects, and there is no dearth of opposition & litigation at every corner. 

Very often, poor planning by the authorities is seen as a key problem for most of our projects faltering. But the constraints under which our planners operate also are real (though all constraints are man made).

Like its said about so many of our projects: Conceived in the 1900s, planned in the 2000s and executed perhaps 10-20 years later. So almost every project is already decades behind on its first day!