Cars are glamorous, sexy and fast. Everyone wants one. Their numbers keep increasing. In 1900 few people had seen an automobile, today there are 500 million cars worldwide – and it is predicted that the number will double in twenty five years.

Vvvrrrrooooom…we in India are going the same way. If our very own Prime Minister and Finance Minister are to be believed we Indians also must suffer from Carmania. Vajpayeeji is personally pushing for a grand four lane highway project connecting the four corners of the country. Yashwant Sinhaji is making cars cheaper and cheaper. Yet, just about 8% of the world population have a car at their disposal – a tiny, privileged fraction enjoys levels of speed which contribute to depriving most of the world's people of their fair share in the world's resources.

FUNDUNG

Cars promise mobility and freedom to all, they say. Do they? To run these cars we burn fossil fuels that cause global warming and climate change. To drive them we build roads that eat up precious cropland. According to Lester Brown of the World Resources Institute, "The United States, with its 214 million motor vehicles, has paved 6.3 million kilometres (3.9 million miles) of roads, enough to circle the Earth at the equator 157 times. In addition to roads, cars require parking space. Imagine a parking lot for 214 million cars and trucks. If that is too difficult, try visualising a parking lot for 1,000 cars and then imagine what 214,000 of these would look like." Millions of hectares of cropland in the industrial world have been paved over for roads and parking lots. With developing countries with hungry populations sacrificing more and more farmland, Brown questions the future role of the car. Says he, "A country (India) projected to add 515 million more people by 2050 cannot afford to cover valuable cropland with asphalt for roads and parking lots."

But we all want to be like those cool Americans. Americans, who drive 2 trillion miles a year: double the distance of those in other industrial countries. Americans, who with less than 5 percent of the world's population, consume a quarter of the world's oil, half of which is burned in motor vehicles. Americans, who drive more and more and whose per capita motor vehicle use has tripled since 1950. For whom one car is just not enough: in 1990, there were 23 million more vehicles than licensed drivers. We wannabe fast, efficient and kewl. Push that pedal…

Scrrreeeechhh… Stop. Think.

Cars, as operated now, are inefficient. Modern vehicles are designed for private ownership (meri maruti mera sapna) not for the public good. Need to go to the post office? You zip off in your new Matiz, while others have to jump out of the way as you speed past polluting a common atmosphere with toxic emissions. Our cities are choking to death with air pollution and horrendous traffic congestion. Why? Because there are no controls, no incentives to limit the ever-increasing rise in automobile use precisely because the costs are not borne by the user. Everyone wants a free ride. Nobody wants to pay.