At the beginning of January, Road and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari expressed hope that the Road Transport and Safety Bill 2015 would be passed in the Budget session itself. The new Road Safety Bill seems more than necessary in India. It is currently still the country with the most dangerous roads in the world. However, beyond road safety, there are major economic issues. Indeed, there is a risk to destroy the public purpose and to protect private interests at the cost of the public exchequer. It would be better if the public transportation system remains under the aegis of the States, rather than under the management of the central government outsourcing to private firms.

1. Policy BriefGathering experts to improve transportation in India
INDIA TRANSPORT PORTAL January 2016
With over 1.4 lakhs road fatalities and 4.8 lakhs
injured in 2014 alone - though the World Health
Organisation (WHO) gives an estimate of 2 lakhs
fatalities– road accident remains one of the leading
causes of death in India (1). This means that there is
at least one death every four minutes and one colli-
sion every minute, due to road accidents on Indian
killer roads. Paradoxically more than a tenth of the
world’s road fatalities occurs in India, which only
accounts for less than 3% of the world’s vehicles.
Thus, this safety issue should be tackled as a matter
of urgency by the Indian government. Despite the
death of a Union cabinet minister in a car crash last
year in Delhi and the recent letter signed by 50 MPs
urging Prime Minister Modi to introduce the Road
IN BRIEF
A
t the beginning of January, Road
and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari
expressed hope that the Road Trans-
port and Safety Bill 2015 would be passed
in the Budget session itself. The new Road
Safety Bill seems more than necessary in
India. It is currently still the country with
the most dangerous roads in the world.
However, beyond road safety, there are
major economic issues. Indeed, there is
a risk to destroy the public purpose and
to protect private interests at the cost of
the public exchequer. It would be better if
the public transportation system remains
under the aegis of the States, rather than
under the management of the central go-
vernment outsourcing to private firms.
Keywords: road safety bill, road safety authorities,
PPP (Public-Private Partnership)
INDIA:
ROAD TRANSPORT
AND SAFETY BILL
UNCOVERED
Dunu Roy
Analyses from interviews made with
India Transport Portal.
Published by
India Transport Portal
Please Visit Us Online at
www.IndiaTransportPortal.com

2. Policy BriefGathering experts to improve transportation in India
INDIA TRANSPORT PORTAL January 2016
Transport and Safety Bill, the road transport mi-
nistry has not managed to bring all state govern-
ments on board yet. Moreover, the Bill has been
relentlessly opposed by the Trade Unions (TUs)
in the public sector Road Transport Corpora-
tions (RTC) since its first draft, in September
2014 (2). The TUs are understandably concerned
over the potential withdrawal of protection given
to the State RTCs from unhealthy competition
by private operators.
Nevertheless, Dunu Roy, director of the Hazard
Centre and Senior Fellow at the Centre of Public
Affairs and Critical Thought, Shiv Nadar Univer-
sity, warns against the drawbacks of such a Bill.
According to Roy, the Road Transport and Safety
Bill 2015 seeks to change the entire structure of
the sector, under the innocent garb of ‘safety’.
To support his argument, he takes the case of
the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corpo-
ration (MSRTC), which currently has a fleet of
23,500 buses, with 1.2 lakh employees on 17,000
routes, carrying 70 lakh passengers every day.
Several recent studies demonstrate the extent to
which the MSRTC has been a dependable mode
of transportation for over 65 years, particularly
helpful to passengers in rural areas. Yet despite
fulfilling a public purpose, the MSRTC is facing
important challenges from the private sector but
also a high tax burden on it – as the Maharashtra
State government is unwilling to protect it any
longer. In addition, the MRSTC’s facilities need
to be improved to ensure its competitiveness
against the private sector; this seems difficult,
even impossible, without the State government
support. The MRSTC case illustrates the current
situation of States RTCs in India.
The proposed Bill is said to be “expedient in the
public interest that the Union should take road
transport under its control”. However, Dunu Roy
“the Road Transport and
Safety Bill continues
to follow these failed ideas
in the name of ‘safety’”
-Dunu Roy
INDIA: ROAD TRANSPORT AND SAFETY BILL UNCOVERED2

3. Policy BriefGathering experts to improve transportation in India
INDIA TRANSPORT PORTAL January 2016
rightly points out that it was the same argument
given for the States’ takeover of private transport
in the 1930s. Indeed, in the light of the arbitrary
ways of private transporters, the Nizam of Hyde-
rabad took over the whole transport system of the
region under his rule in 1932.
The Bill would be regulated by two bodies: the
National Road Safety and Vehicle Regulation of
India and the National Road Transport and Multi-
modal Coordination – respectively shortened to
the Safe Authority and the Coordination Autho-
rity. Surprisingly, these two regulating bodies
would have both the same organisational struc-
ture as well as the same objective of: “eliminating
practices that are adverse to transportation safety,
road safety, and innovation and adoption of new
technology”. However, their assigned functions
should be different.
In the proposed Bill, the Coordination Autho-
rity – designated by Roy as ‘Big Brother’ – is said
to “plan, develop and coordinate multi-modal,
integrated, safe, sustainable and efficient transport
systems”; “improve the environmental performan-
ce”; and “promote economic prosperity”. Through
“global competitiveness, productivity, efficiency”,
the Coordination Authority will “enhance eco-
nomic vitality” through; and promote “integrated
land use”.
However, this entity would also “design and
implement an Electronic Road Crash and Offences
System”; enable “the submission of data on road
crashes and offences ... electronically”; facilitate
“collection of uniform standardised information”;
and specify “protective gear and conspicuity requi-
rements”. Roy thus argues that “a series of Public
Private Partnerships (PPPs) that entails huge
profits in the supply of electronic sensors, television
cameras, smart cards, chips, computers, relaying
and processing equipment, control software, and
consultancies – all of which will be bankrolled by
public funds.” Therefore in the name of safety,
the establishment of such a Bill would involve
enormous governmental spending, which
would not necessarily improve road safety in
India but rather enrich private companies.
The Safety Authority has been appointed to re-
gulate the licensing of drivers, the manufacture
and registration of all motor vehicles as well
as standards for road safety, infrastructure and
traffic control. It is also in charge of facilitating
not only safe and sustainable use of the road
transport system but also to ensure the safety of
vulnerable road users. Nonetheless, Dunu Roy
questions “why such a ‘safety’ authority should
also be asked to monitor public-private par-
tnership schemes, promote new vehicle technolo-
gy, as well as function as an ‘economic regulator
for the purposes of developing a framework to
guide the determination of costs of safety equip-
ment to be installed in motor vehicle’ is a bit of a
mystery.”
Moreover, according to several studies, pre-
vious PPP models around the Net Cost Model
undertaken in several sectors - including the
transport system - have allegedly been terrible
failures. For instance, Swamy and Patel of the
Ahmadabad-based Centre for Excellence in Ur-
ban Transport (3) (2014) demonstrate that out
of 11 bus-based transit projects involving priva-
te companies, eight have either been closed or
shut down early while the remaining three had
suffered no system expansion since the incep-
tion of the initial project. Therefore this leads
Dunu Roy to argue that: “the Road Transport
and Safety Bill continues to follow these failed
ideas in the name of ‘safety’, bringing in a series
of measures that will not only completely destroy
INDIA: ROAD TRANSPORT AND SAFETY BILL UNCOVERED3

4. About India Transport Portal
Founded in 2010, India Transport Portal (ITP) is a leading independent and analysis hub,
whose particularity is to bring together academics, experts, business people and public
authorities. This platform gathers and involves specialists from different fields on key
issues with regard to transportation challenges in India.
More on www.indiatransportportal.com
About Dunu Roy
Dunu Roy is Senior Fellow at Centre of Public Affairs and
Critical Thought (CPACT), Shiv Nadar University and also
associated with the Hazards Centre.
1. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/189242/1/9789241565066_eng.pdf
2. http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=109649
3. http://cept.ac.in/center-for-excellence-in-urban-transport-coe/research
the ‘public purpose’ that is embedded in the SRTCs, but
extract more revenue through centralisation of what
has been a State subject. The ‘private interest’ will be
protected at the cost of the public exchequer.”
Thus, it may be preferable to concentrate the Union
budget – as initially allocated to the different measu-
res of the proposed Bill mentioned above - on impro-
ving the public transportation system and facilities.
According to Roy, it seems that the public transporta-
tion system should remain under the aegis of the Sta-
tes, rather than under the management of the central
government outsourcing to private firms.
“the ‘private interest’ will be
protected at the cost of the
public exchequer”
-Dunu Roy
Policy BriefGathering experts to improve transportation in India
INDIA TRANSPORT PORTAL January 2016
INDIA: ROAD TRANSPORT AND SAFETY BILL UNCOVERED4