When traffic conditions and aggressive driving all around makes our mind spin, we often pass a little judgement of our own that no matter how high their IQ, driverless cars will end up with fried processors, just with the amount of honking that happens on our roads. Probably the Government realises this too and our Surface Transport Minister has announced the Driverless Cars won’t be allowed in India. But their reason has to be crowd pleasing. So they think autonomous cars is a bad idea because it will snatch away jobs and render people jobless.
Explaining the decision, Mr. Nitin Gadkari said, “Driverless cars will not be allowed in India as it will lead to joblessness. Instead, the government will focus on training drivers as adequate driving skills can provide employment to about 50 lakh people. We will not allow driverless cars in India. India suffers a huge shortage of 22 lakh drivers and cab aggregators take advantage of the situation. We are not going to promote any technology or policy that will render people jobless.”
Mr. Gadkari also clarified that the Government will ensure that electric vehicles are promoted, but dissuade their imports and would rather urge manufacturers to build locally and strengthen the ‘Make in India’ drive. Among the Road Transport Ministry’s plans, one proposal is to introduce a cab aggregator platform where commuters could choose any mode of transportation like electric four-wheeler taxis, or two-wheelers. The government will only be a facilitator in this but the platform will bring in more competition and help commuters to pick between affordable public transportation choices.
The Government is also planning to make GPS and satellite tracking mandatory in all public and private vehicles. To modernise the current fleet of buses, plans are afoot to replace 1.8 lakh examples across states with luxury buses. The Surface Transport Ministry is in talks with the World Bank and ADB to replicate the London Transport Authority Model where all the public transportation buses would be replaced by luxury buses and a common man can travel in them by paying about 40 per cent less price as compared to current fares.
The Government has plans to introduce Double decker and other luxury buses where there would be facilities on par with flights. The project would be complemented by building state-of-the-art bus ports on the line of Indian airports and a special National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) wing with an equity of Rs 500 crore would be set up to undertake this. The government plans to construct 25 bus ports pan-India at present, he said. Also, there has been changes in the e-rickshaw and carts designs to facilitate transportation of goods.
With inputs from NDTV
Actually i guess its more of a “Population” problem, Car/Bike density on roads than jobs. Realistically Roads are jam packed with vehicles that Autonomy simply makes no sense inside cities.