Moily Metro Ride: Stunt or Campaign to Save Fuel

On the face of it, Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily’s Metro ride on Wednesday appears to be a good attempt to make people, particularly ministers and bureaucrats, aware of importance of fuel and how to conserve energy. He walked to the nearest Metro Station from his Tughlak Lane residence to take Metro for Shastri Bhavan. Moily has announced that he would make it a weekly habit of taking Metro and shunning official car to reach his office.

Unless other Ministers in the government and the bureaucrats emulate Moily by taking to public transport even once a week to reach place of work, this exercise of the Petroleum Minister would prove nothing more than a publicity stunt. I am told majority of Moily’s colleagues in the Union Council of Ministers are uncomfortable with the example set by the Petroleum Minister. Ministers and Bureaucrats are not ready to follow suit and take Metro or Bus ride to reach office even once a week.

The Government is not serious about launching campaign to conserve energy and reduce consumption of fossil fuel. The Government should issue an appeal to ask people including those in power to select one day in a week to take public transport.

In the past there has been campaign by general public to pool in transport. For instance if from an area, four people go to same destination for work, they can use one car in rotation instead of four cars. But people in Delhi are different from people in Calcutta or Mumbai. In Mumbai, one can see many senior executives in private sectors drawing more than one lakh rupees a month using local train to commute. Most of the executives use cars to reach nearest station and take local to reach office.

In sharp contrast, Delhi people don’t like to take bus or metro if they have cars. A friend commented that left to themselves most of Delhites would take their cars right at the dining table of restaurants if that facility is made available to them. It is a common sight to see that many healthy people in Delhi take lift even to climb down one or two floors.

The second most important thing is for the government to take a policy decision to curb or put a cap on consumption of petrol for all Ministers and Bureaucrats. It is common to abuse official cars by the rulers for private purposes. It is a common sight again in Delhi to see government cars parked at up markets like Connaught Place, South Extension and Greater Kailash. The government should after due calculations allow limited quantity of fuel be it Minister or Officer. In case of  consumption in excess of the cap  the user should bear the cost. Also, there is blatant abuse of buying more fuel than actually required. Say, for instance, if a particular model of car gives 10 km a liter, government vehicles show that the car runs only 6 km a liter, huge theft of petrol and diesel.

Ministers should also avoid using government planes, be it of Indian Air Force, Border Security Force or other units where commercial flights are available. Except for Prime Minister and President, all Ministers should use commercial flight that would save millions of liters of petrol.

The tragedy is no leader who can inspire people. There is lack of credibility. Ministers lead a life style that matches opulent class of the society and the bureaucrats are not far behind though their known source of income does not allow them to lead a five star life style, officers are in the habit of abusing government perks or take benefits from private industrial and business houses.

~R K Sinha