Odd-even Tamasha
The first fortnight of April has just gone by and the temperatures have breached the 40 degree Celsius mark in Delhi. The signs are ominous of a harsh, scorching summer ahead but that does not stop guys at the helm of affairs in Delhi Government to play that odd-even game – dobara (again)! It doesn’t matter to these guys if the depleting, not-so-road-worthy fleet of DTC cannot increase capacity or efficiency for handling even normal days’ load. It certainly does not seem to be the Government’s concern that the last-mile-connectivity for Delhi Metro continues to be a big challenge. Yet the CM has the gall to unleash more people on the already harassed commuters of public transport or leave them at the mercy of the auto-rickshaws and cabs in this heat. This odd-even game seems to be far more significant for this one-time Anna Hazare publicist as it gives him yet another opportunity to feature in full-page ads, large bill-boards, radio-spots and even in mobile-phone-push-messages! And all on tax-payers money!
Some legal eagles are appalled that they pull guys out of their ‘legitimately’ bought cars for which the Dilliwalahs paid a hefty one-time-road-tax and deny them what appears to be a fundamental right on the pretext that it is good for Delhi! ‘Good for whom?’ is what they ask and requested this blogger to air their point of view.
Anyways, coming back to Dilliwalahs – they surely live by the axiom ‘if you cannot defeat them – join them’ – so here is this blogger joining ‘them’. So imagine it is January 2017 and we have the same odd-even tamasha on for a 30-day period except that now it has been extended to human beings (by the way, if not stopped this is where our guy is going to lead it all to!). Human beings will stay indoors or will be allowed to step out as per their tag of ‘odd’ or ‘even’.
As a prelude there will surely be the regular advertising blitzkrieg with our guy in his trademark muffler (its winters in Delhi then) announcing the classification criterion of ‘odd-even people’. This is how some of the prominent residents of Delhi would be classified as either ‘odd’ or ‘even’:
The gentleman from Gujarat who gets his name embedded on expensive attires which is perhaps unbecoming of a senior politician of a developing country and is quite odd, therefore, gets relegated to ‘odd’ category (don’t worry folks, he would still get to attend the Republic Day celebrations as they are on the 26th!).
The former DDCA Chairperson who has since been attempting to get even with the Delhi CM gets relegated to ‘even’ (but he gets to go to Lodhi Garden for his early morning walks as the odd-even tamasha begins only post 8 am).
Then there is this casual visitor to Delhi who masqueraders as the soul-keeper of the nation – that bald actor who resided in Delhi during his NSD innings – he is not affected at all since he is all gas any which way! (Yes, we’ll have to bear with Mr Kher!)
The fundamental right bit comes from a lawyer, SN, a true blue blood Dilliwalah himself who now practices law at the Supreme Court. He screamed: “It is $&#@!^&$ an infringement of our fundamental right. I have a right to move freely anywhere”.Guys from Dilli6 would know exactly what’s the Hindustani equivalent of $&#@!^&$ is! The credit for the Road-tax bit goes to my colleague Sanjeev – who is all about the conspiracy of silence!
