BANK
LOAN
POLICIES
& ACCIDENTS
DR.
SHRINIWAS
KASHALIKAR

The accidents on the roads are mainly, if not
exclusively, (apart from many other causes),
are due to excessive number of vehicles on the
roads.
This excessive number is due to increase in
demand of small vehicles and two wheelers.
This is due to 1) inadequate production and
promotion of vehicles of mass transport such
as buses, 2) Artificial creation of felt status
need 3) Aggressive marketing 4) excessive
production and supply of private cars, auto-
rickshaws and two wheelers and 5) Easily
available low interest (easily affordable for a
certain class of people) loans for purchase of
private cars, rickshaws and two wheelers.
Ideally the government should have proper
policies, rules and regulations for rectification
of this aberration, in terms of excessive
production. In addition, the government

should also make it mandatory for the banks
to give substantially lower interest loans for
the purchase of buses as compared to and in
preference to private cars, rickshaws and two
wheelers.
But even if government fails to do so, the
banks can volunteer and take initiative and
lead to provide substantially lower interest
loans for purchases of buses as compared to
and in preference to the loans for cars,
rickshaws and two wheelers.
This can have some rectifying influence in
terms of preferential purchase of buses and
running public undertakings and businesses of
mass (bus) transport.
The persons in the money lending sectors such
as banks, and especially those in decision
making position, have to realize that their

concern for the prevention or reduction in the
number and severity of road accidents can be
effectively expressed to the satisfaction of
their conscience, through such a bank policy
and its implementation. This is because even
though, this measure obviously can not
prevent the road accidents completely, it
would certainly tackle one of the major causes
of road accidents, viz. easy financing and
thereby unabated increase in the number of
vehicles on the roads. This would surely
reduce the number and severity of accidents.
This point certainly does not undermine the
importance of the individual precautions. But
it is important to realize that this measure is
not merely complementary to all the
precautions the car owners, drivers,
pedestrians and the traffic police should take,
but its impact, like that of any accurate
decision, is far more effective, widespread and

on massive scale than any individual or
institutional precautions, taken in isolation.