The state of affairs in the national capital’s public transport system has shown how stupid it can be to believe that just change of colour or nomenclature matters. A few years ago, the Delhi government was confronted with rising public anger over a spate of fatal road accidents involving the privately run “Redline” city bus service.

Redline buses had become synonymous with grave danger to the life of the travelling public. The government’s response was quick. It simply gave a new name to these privately owned and operated Redline buses. All that it required the bus owners to do was replace the Redline name with a new one “Blueline” and then paint the bus in blue colour stripes instead of the then existing red stripes. So, the government sought to assure Delhiites that it had done away with the red colour that signalled the danger signs.

The government’s bluff has been called. It is being proved on the Delhi roads every day that the Blueline buses are no different from the predecessor Redlines. Last Sunday in one of the latest accidents involving a speeding Blueline bus as many as six peoples were killed in the national capital. The fact is whether one called it Blueline or Redline, it is the same bus, badly maintained, owned by the same owner, driven by the same profit motive and the same ill-trained driver. Worse still, the same owner-police-bureaucrat nexus prevails. It is a mafia of a kind.
That all this is happening in the national capital is not good news for other cities. Only a few days ago, a private agency survey of 48 Indian cities had this “feel-good” announcement that Delhi is the best city to live in in India and that its urban infrastructure is by far the best in the country. The report actually hides more than it reveals about Delhi. It now emerges that a powerful nexus, involving underworld criminal elements, owner mafia, police, bureaucracy and politicians, is providing substance to the chaotic public transport order in the national capital. Our executive governments do not like judicial intervention in matters that are essentially administrative. But if Delhi is a less polluted city today than it was a decade ago, that was possible because of judicial intervention. It is not a desirable situation. But is there an alternative? The executive must ponder over this, lest its credibility further erode in the public eye.