In recent weeks, road accidents and the resulting deaths have received a lot of attention. Nitin Gadkari has spoken about it and the MoRTH (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways) figures are appalling. They should not be cited, either in terms of accidents, injuries, deaths or estimated GDP losses. About a third of accidents occur on national highways. There is a long list of problems – missing the golden hour, lack of sufficient trauma centers and poor design of roads or vehicles. None of this is unimportant. But my pet peeve is the laxity with which licenses are granted and small penalties for violations.

Many years ago, when I learned to drive, my father insisted that I could not use the family car (an Ambassador) to learn. I’d wreck the car, he said. Instead, I enrolled in a driving school. That was many years ago, so the driving school car was a scrappy land lord. First gear did not work. The car had to be started in second, which was probably good for learning to use the clutch. The horn did not work. Two pieces of wire needed to be joined together to make the horn work. This was Kolkata in the mid-1970s.

In any case, the traffic speed in Kolkata is slow, even now. If you know Kolkata, 30km/hr was peaks, except for a short stretch along Red Road where you hit 40. When we moved to Delhi, it was a shock. You’ve hit 60 across various stretches. For years, I had a mental block about turning 60 and traveling abroad with fast, modern cars and highways never ceased to amaze me. Gradually, India changed; with fast cars, freeways and highways, 110 and 120 became par for the course. (These are speed limits, routinely broken.)

In the 1990s, I worked on a project on law reforms. In the process, I also documented the petty corruptions in and around Delhi. One of these was in Delhi’s RTO (Regional Transport Office) at Janakpuri. Corruption was rampant and salesmen were everywhere. Everyone was open about it. You couldn’t get anything (learner’s permit, driver’s license, commercial license, road fitness certificate) without going through a tout. If I remember correctly, at that time (1993), the fee for a personal driving license was standardized at Rs.850. You didn’t even have to take the test, the student, or the final. Around that time, my briefcase was stolen from my car. He had my driving license and the registration certificate (RC) of the car. I respectfully filed an FIR and went to the RTO to get both. No luck. Both license and RC counters wanted a copy of the original FIR. Shuttle back and forth between police station and RTO. The policemen laughed their heads off. No one had heard of multiple FIRs for the same offence. I must have made eight or nine trips before I gave up. I went to the local driving school and spoke to the owner, Goel. He smiled, with an “I told you so” look. Without more trips to the RTO, I got both. A total expenditure of 1500 lei.

Why does the citizen fall prey to petty corruption? Most citizens are law abiding and honest. They would not like to bribe, and bribery is no less a crime than accepting a bribe. The problem is that the system does not allow everyday life without such a little corruption, no matter how honest you are. For this kind of corruption, I think the two pillars of reduction are removing scarcity and removing discretion, removing the human interface with a technological one.

In 2000, there was a National Commission to review the functioning of the Constitution, chaired by Justice MN Venkatachaliah. Justice Venkatachaliah asked me to do a paper on free movement of trucks in India with Article 269 introduced. (This paper is still buried somewhere on the net.) In the course of it, I discovered a new phenomenon, particularly in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh. Most truck drivers had multiple driving licenses under different names. All names and addresses were fictitious. If your driver’s license was suspended for a crime, no harm was done. There were other driver’s licenses to fall back on. Whenever I’ve had to renew my driver’s license lately (obviously a personal one), I’ve marveled at the cleanup that’s been done through IT and decentralization. At least in Delhi.

Transparency and the disappearance of touts. I’m sure they’re around, especially for commercial licenses. I am sure Delhi is not a representative sample. There are other neighboring states, not as efficient and transparent, perhaps willingly. After all, there are powerful vested interests in favor of the status quo. Despite other reasons, my pet peeve about road accidents is the laxity with which driver’s licenses are issued. Think how hard it is to get a driver’s license in any of the advanced countries. Think of the premium on human life there and contrast it with the drivers (including two-wheelers) you find on the roads here. He doesn’t follow the rules. This is compounded by non-enforcement of rules and weak sanctions.

The writer, a well-known author and economist, is the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Council. The opinions expressed in the piece above are personal and solely the author’s. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.