Motion Sickness
This chapter focuses on India’s public transport system. If cities are democratic laboratories that nurture free and equal motion, then India fails the test every day. In Mumbai, for example, up to sixteen people can find themselves packed into a one-square-metre space inside a carriage during peak hours as Indian Railways fails to provide enough trains and coaches to the financial capital’s arterial rail network. Travelling like animals, risking their lives for livelihood, has been the lot of Mumbai’s daily commuters for as long as they can remember. Away from the cities, where 70 per cent of India lives, the picture is even bleaker, with virtually no state-run public transport system—buses or trains. The daily indignities and inconveniences of travelling prevents citizens from freely accessing goods, services, and social networks that are key to the pursuit of their chosen life strategies. By hindering everyday mobility, hazardous and insufficient transport options have the anti-democratic effect of perpetuating social inequities and dispersing communities into isolated silos that prevent collective assembly, deliberation, and action. Other than dilapidated or non-existent public transport systems, elitist policies, and poor government oversight hinder movement—and democracy—in various other ways.