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| Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma |
For
years the statue of Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma presided over the VIP Road that
provides entry to Bhopal from its northern parts standing on an elevated
pedestal surrounded by tiers of blooming foliage. It dominated the tri-junction
that includes the roads to both, new and old Bhopal. For the city to have
honoured him thus was, in fact, as it should have been, for if Bhopal today is
the capital of Madhya Pradesh it is because of him. Unfortunately, to meet the
demands of modern-day life and burgeoning vehicular traffic his statue had to
be moved and the once-huge rotary of which his statue was the centre point had
to be razed. Today it stands forlorn shrouded by a dusty looking cloth in a
nearby small park that is hardly green for a park and is far too small and dry in
comparison to its former habitat.
Historically
speaking more than fifty years ago a tussle opened up among the three major
towns in the proposed new state of Madhya Pradesh. It seems the States
Re-organisation Commission had not recommended any specific town to be
designated as the capital of the new state. The three major towns - Gwalior,
Indore and Bhopal – entered the fray and claimed to be the most suitable for
being designated as capital. Gwalior and Indore had an edge as both used to be winter
and summer capitals for Madhya Bharat, a major Part B State that was to merge
into the new Madhya Pradesh. Bhopal was much smaller but it too was the capital
of Part C State of Bhopal state.
As
the contest heated up Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, then chief minister of Bhopal
State, got into the act. He repeatedly visited Delhi, Gwalior and Indore
pushing the case of Bhopal holding rallies and addressing public meetings. (I
remember to have heard him speak at a public meeting in Gwalior in 1956.) His
indefatigable efforts yielded results and Bhopal was chosen to be the capital
of the new state of Madhya Pradesh. Later, he was inducted into the Union
Cabinet. Soon, he was elected as the Vice President of India. The ascent to the
highest post in the country proved to be a natural corollary. It was a great
honour for Bhopal as he was its product. Raised in his ancestral house in the
Chowk area and then retiring as head of the Indian State was nothing short of a
remarkably great achievement.
Having
spent lakhs of rupees in raising a dignified monument to honour Dr. Sharma it
was a pity that his statue had to be removed and treated with so much
indignity. Bhopal has a history of creating rotaries, enlarging them,
decorating them and even planting a statue in each of them of mostly ‘un-worthies’
with a very few exceptions at substantial cost to the public exchequer. Later came
a time to reduce the sizes of the rotaries – in some cases little by little, in
some others, cutting their sizes by a heavy hand. Currently it is the era of
undoing everything that was done before by removal of rotaries and along with
them the statues that were installed in the middle of them. Apparently, in
doing all this the money spent has been of no consequence; all this is being
done to manage the rising volumes of vehicular traffic with the help of new
technology of red, green and amber lights.
One
wonders whether what is being done is right. There is a contrarian opinion that
traffic roundabouts work and they work beautifully saving injuries to commuters
and even their lives. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety of
America, roundabouts reduce accidents by 40%, injuries nearly by 80% and
fatalities by 90%. The Old Street roundabout in Shoreditch, London has been
dubbed the “Silicone Roundabout” with a message that roundabouts are an
engineering breakthrough that saves lives and limbs. Howard McCullough is
reckoned as the roundabout specialist of New York where the Department of
Transportation is considered more advanced when it comes to its Roundabout
Programme. He is fascinated by the burgeoning roundabouts of England. There is
no denying the fact that roundabouts have their positive side. Traffic
necessarily has to slow down at a roundabout reducing fatalities and even
injuries, while the traffic keeps flowing evenly in the absence of lights at
the intersections to stop it.
In
New Delhi there are huge roundabouts and the traffic generally flows evenly. Of
course, occasionally it has to be manually managed when impatient commuters try
to overtake by by breaching traffic rules. The human element is vital for its
success when new technology is introduced. Sophisticated technology cannot
prove to be successful unless those who work it or those who have to act out
according to its requirements have a change of heart. Obeying “rules of the
road” is a cardinal requirement for a commuter who chooses to use a public
road. If he does not do so he will put his life and those of others at peril.
Only
time will tell whether Bhopal has taken the right decision to get rid of all
the roundabouts along with their statues. In the meanwhile however, the statue
of the Late President languishes abandoned in a drab corner of an un-pretty park.
28th April 2017
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