Highway to heaven

I guess the first thing one notices when coming out of the airport in a foreign country is the way people drive. Not only the left-right stuff, but also the usual driving skills, road manners, speed etc. My hypothesis is that how people drive reflects how we are as a country - whether we respect rules, care about others, give space to our co-inhabitants, and generally how developed we are as a nation. After travelling a bit, I have no doubt in my mind that the level of development of a country has nothing to do with how wonderful the highways and roads are...it is the people that make a country what it is.

Three case studies illustrate this point. First, Japan. Politeness and respect for others is clearly reflected on the road. I remember once there was a 35-km long pileup during one of those long weekends when the national pastime is sitting in a traffic jam. Nobody lost temper, if someone wanted to change lanes, others let them do it, then the person will flash his hazard lights twice to say "Thank you!" and then move on at snail's pace. Not one horn, one glare, one bad word, one finger sticking out of the window! It is too good to be true, one has to really pinch oneself to believe it. Highway to heaven - for sure!

Second, Uganda. The road from Entebbe airport beside Lake Victoria to the capital Kampala is picturesque, undulating and pretty well carpeted. My driver however was a maniac who would drive at the most maddening speed in the uninhabited stretches. I could well imagine what the co-drivers of rally cars go through, they probably get battered more than the drivers themselves. But interestingly, my maniac driver would slow down to 30kmph whenever he was going through a populated area, or where there was a school sign. The Toyota minibuses would invariably pull over to the shoulder when stopping to pick up passengers. The most amazing thing again happened during a long traffic jam - not one of the cars broke the queue and went to the empty side to cut through traffic. I guess that is the spirit of the country - a bit careless about themselves, but gracious when it comes to others, and a collective ethos that makes people not willing to jump the queue. Not quite there, but on the road to prosperity. 

Third, India. The only other country that I have visited where the traffic is more chaotic than India is Yemen. But then Yemen is one of the poorest and most illiterate, backward countries in the world. Surely if I have to compare India with Yemen, there is something amiss - India is now a bric in the global wall, a marauding elephant on the path to double-digit growth, knowledge economy, etc. etc. So how come we are so low down on the driving development index? 

I remember the time in my childhood when going out for a drive beside the river Ganges used to be a very pleasurable experience, albeit a bit bourgeois! People who owned cars drove themselves - mostly the educated upper middle class of the society. Then a sea-change happened as the Indian economy started to move faster. Driving was not a pastime any more, rather an occupation. Education and employment opportunities lagged behind income growth, people without any idea of driving bought cars, got illiterate villagers to drive them around. The fine line between bullock carts and internal combustion engines got blurred. 

So, where do we go from here. Are India or Uganda going to become Japan? Maybe we will, but it will take a long time for us to get there. It all depends on how quickly our education, health, laws and infrastructure catches up. But then, it is all about the people behind the wheels driving on the highways to heaven.