Instead, you see the roads lined with yoga mats and steppers and men and women clad in expensive lycra, track pants, sweatshirts and sports shoes performing calisthenics and aerobics in the vain hope of working off the calories they've ingested through the week in their high-paying, sedentary jobs. This is odd only because these people hardly need to close a public thoroughfare to work out; they can well afford the price of the many gyms that dot each city.
Elsewhere, adults and children clad in cycling gear and helmets can be seen careening around on pricey bikes, many thousands of rupees removed from the rudimentary kind that is plied by domestic helps, handy-men and workers who keep the cities ticking every other day. Ironically, the latter, who use this non-polluting form of transport all the time, are hard to spot on the days the streets are "reclaimed" by "the people". Maybe their children are participating in local football, the way generations of Calcutta children who played pada (neighbourhood) football and cricket did? Nope, no signs.
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This is not to say that Raahgiri is a bad thing. With their laughing clubs, bands playing, uncharacteristically friendly cops dispensing advice on traffic rules, self-defence classes, some advocacy about the environment and social responsibility, a sociable, collegiate atmosphere permeates the place. The ambience is notably different from the aggression that is the default position of the average inhabitant of the National Capital Region (NCR). Of course, it's the kind of civilised atmosphere you take for granted in, say, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Kolkata or much of small town India. It says much that we need to block public roads to be good neighbours in NCR.
It is hard not to miss the many ironies in this carefully created, exclusionary environment that is now beginning to attract sponsorships from prominent corporate groups, too. For one, many of the things that constitute Raahgiri can as well be organised in any of the sprawling compounds of any of the high-rise complexes, several of which have commandeered common lands in questionable deals down the years.
For another, there is something worrying about the virtue being invested in a movement created by the same people who cause the problem in the first place. The NCR's roads would be a lot less choked with traffic and fumes if people eschewed the gas-guzzling SUVs and luxury cars, the most potent status symbols of rising India. Even more insanely in a country where the government is always cash-strapped, these luxury vehicles are powered by subsidised diesel. Instead of Raahgiri, some self-limiting behavioural change could be a lot more useful in the long run.
Urban pollution and overcrowding are serious problems that require sober, thoughtful assessments and solutions. But with India's articulate urban rich and middle class increasingly dominating the public discourse, such long-term planning is increasingly being subsumed by self-serving agendas. This was well in evidence during the outcry over the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor in Delhi. Designed to encourage the use of mass transport and cycling (the special lane, now infested with motorised two-wheelers, can still be seen), it provoked such an outcry from petulant car owners forced to slow down in favour of buses used by the masses that it was eventually abandoned. No one asked bus commuters what they thought of the BRT. Someone, no doubt a car owner, derisively described the BRT as "socialism on the roads". By that token, and given the way it's shaping up, Raahgiri is turning out to be an example of unabashed capitalism on the roads.