We at CHETNA had been taking up the issues in unchartered territories where, most of the people are sacred. Be it fleecing of Consumers by Taxis/TSR or Power Distribution Companies – DISCOMS in Delhi, pollution by Aviation or non implementation of Indian Road Congress Norms with regard to Mandatory Greening of Highways – recrishtened by present Govt as “The Green Highways (Plantation, Transplantation, Beautification & Maintenance) Policy, 2015” which ios more on papers than on ground and milch cow for the Corrupt Babus and politicians.
We had been funding education of briliant school children from poor starta of Society. Recently we have renovated a Free Pre Nursery School Building at Jhugi cluster area where children from JJ cluster are provided free education and mid day meals. Annually about 20 children from this school go to Govt scholls for higher education.
Coming back to subject in 2003 we undertook study of 20 most busy intersections of Delhi to analyse the impact of fuel burning while idling at traffic islands and impact thereof on Environment and Economy. This was job of Central Road Reseach Institute which never moved out of its air conditioned offices. By spending almost a year on various intersections, calculating number of vehicles, periodicity at traffic islands, cost of petrol & diesel and other multiple factors, we found that traffic jams were not just paralyzing Delhi’s traffic but also hit the economy.
Annually, Rs.24 Crore worth of fuel is burnt in Delhi at intersections merely by the eight minute wait cycle it takes for four wings of traffic to wait at a red light cross over. At any peak hours, there are around 2,500 vehicles on all sides of 20 odd intersections in Delhi and these vehicles spend at least eight minutes there. The traffic intensity is so high that even few minutes’ break can cause a major jam. It is all due to the mindless growth of centralized pockets in the City. Majority of Delhi’s working population engaged in varies activities rush towards a few centralized zones like Connaught Place, I.T.O (Indraprastha Estate) or Central Secretariat.
I was pleasantly surprised that this study was referred by two experts (Samir K. Mondal, Nandini Acharya ) in their study on "Urbanization and Socio-Economic Consequences- a case study for Delhi" presented at Population Association of America 2004 Annual Meeting Program link at – https://paa2004.populationassociation.org/papers/41518