RAJENDRA K. PACHAURI, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is getting nightmares because of the Nano, Tata’s soon-to-be-launched Rs one-lakh car. Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) says that it isn’t the Nano by itself but cars overall that give her nightmares. The villains in my nightmares are neither the Nano nor cars overall, but stupid government policies that subsidize and encourage pollution, adulteration and congestion.Sanctimonious greens call the Nano disastrous because of its affordability— millions more will now clog roads and consume more fossil fuel. This is
elitism parading as virtue. Elite greens own cars, but cannot stand the poorer masses becoming mobile, since the consequent congestion will eat into the time of the elite!
More logical would be a protest against big cars that use more space and fuel, or highly polluting old cars. Instead, green hypocrites aim at a new car with the lowest cost, best mileage and least emissions.
The Nano will not burden us with too many cars. India has very few cars per person by world
standards. London and New York have ultra-high car densities, yet have clearer air than Delhi. Our problem is too many bad policies, not too many cars.
We subsidize vehicles on a gargantuan scale invisible to lay folk. Roads and flyovers cost crores to build and maintain, yet road use is free (save on a few toll roads). Traffic police and lights are costly, yet are provided free. These invisible subsidies starve cities of funds to expand roads and public transport.
Land in cities now costs laths per square metre. Yet parking is free in the suburbs, and often costs just RslO per day in city centres. A single parking space of 23 square metres occupies land worth Rs40 lakh. A car occupies more space than an office desk, yet the desk space pays full commercial rent while parking space costs just about RslO per day.
Daily parking charges range from $15 (Rs630) in Washington to $30 (Rs1260) in New York. CSE launched a sensible campaign to raise parking fees in Delhi to Rs120 per day, but was foiled. So, parking space now exceeds green space, a scathing comment on priorities.
The world price of crude oil has risen 13-fold since 1998 to over $130 per barrel, but Indian petrol prices have barely doubled. Left Front politicians, who once wanted to soak the rich, now want to subsidin them. Under-recoveries of oil companies’ total may be Rs200,000 crore, even after a recent price hike This is far more than the cost of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan [education for all] and the Employment Guarantee Scheme put together. We sanctimoniously lecture rich countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions,
subsidize our own.
Diesel is subsidized to be cheaper than petrol. So, Indian makers produce the highest proportion of diesel cars in the world. Diesel fumes contain suspended particles that are highly toxic, this subsidy kills.
So does kerosene provided at throwaway prices, ostensibly to benefit poor villagers. One-third
all kerosene is used to adulterate petrol and diesel. That causes horrendous pollution even in the greenest of cars.
What’s the way forward? We must abolish subsidies and raise taxes on vehicles and fuels to refle their full social cost. The biggest least visible subsidy is for parking, and we should start there.
Many car owners in the West take public transport to work since parking space downtown is costly and scarce. We should levy parking fees on an hourly, not daily, basis.
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