It was the 26th of May, 2004. I got out of the car, overwhelmed by the heat. I wiped my sweaty brow with one of the handkerchiefs I was carrying (yes, it was that hot), and looked around. The vast Road Transport Office (RTO) head office campus next to the Bombay Central train station stood before me. I was finally old enough to get a driver’s license! I walked for about twenty minutes, being deflected from one counter to the other like a hockey puck, trying to figure out where I could take my driving test.

I finally found the right counter, and waited another thirty minutes in line for my turn. I then (finally used twice) had the pleasure of standing before one Mr. Ghorpade from the RTO. He looked up at me, and grunted something that sounded like the word ‘name’. I told him my name. He wrote it in Marathi on a slip of paper. He then asked me, “Standard or express?” I asked him to elaborate. He was clearly annoyed that I was not down with the RTO lingo, and he bellowed at a timid clerk sitting nearby. The clerk quickly hobbled over, and took me aside. He told me in a hushed tone, “Standard means you take the driving test, and the license will be mailed to you in a month. Express means you attach three hundred bucks with the application, and your driving license will be given to you right away without a driving test.”

I was appalled at this suggestion, and I told him I would not pay a bribe. In fact, I said it so loudly that everyone stopped momentarily to look at me. The meek clerk almost pulled me out of the office by my arm and asked me in Marathi with a bewildered face, “Are you trying to get us into trouble? This is the way things work here.” I gave him a disgusted look and walked back inside. I went up to Mr. Ghorpade, and told him I wanted to get my license the ‘Standard’ way. He looked up at me again, and smirked, “You are the first one to say that in weeks!” I said to him, “Deal with it. Can I take my test now?” He said he would send someone out right away.

Apparently, ‘right away’ means about an hour or so in RTO lingo. I sat in my car in the searing heat, listening to songs on the radio. I wished the world would end, and I would go to hell. I was sure it would be cooler there. The driving test supervisor ambled to my car eventually, picking his nose the whole way from the office building to my car. He got into the back seat of the car, as my friend was sitting in the front passenger’s seat. He grunted, “Ration card”. I said I had brought my passport. To which he replied, “Nahi chalega” (Won’t do). I asked him why. He said that the RTO did not recognize the passport as a valid form of ID. I didn’t know whether to feel pity at this ignorance, or angry at his incompetence. I told him, “This is the apex identification issued by the Government of India, and if you don’t accept this, it means that you are a moron.” He frowned at me, and took my passport in his hand. He asked me to start the car, and started flicking through the pages. He read out aloud the names of the countries whose visas were in my passport. “Amrika, Englund, Singapur, Indo..Indo…nesia, Ostreliya…seems like you have travelled all over. I’m sure you know how to drive. You pass.” That was it. He passed me based on the countries I had visited!

I began to protest his lack of seriousness towards confirming whether I can actually drive or not. He said, “Look, it’s bad enough that you want to make us go through all this paperwork to give you a license when you could just pay us and get it done in a day’s time. On top of all this, you actually want me to take your test? What is wrong with you!” He spat his paan outside my car, and simply walked off. I stood there exasperated, not knowing what to think of it. This was my first encounter with RTO corruption. And thanks to the twenty-five year validity of my driver license, probably my last encounter for a long time to come.

Since then, I have thought from time to time about that incident. I have wondered whether my encounter with RTO corruption really ended when I walked out of that campus. I have come to the conclusion that this experience never stops. By requesting a driving test, I was an exception. Even then, by not taking my test seriously, the RTO gave a license to one more person who it wasn’t sure could drive or not. Thousands of people get driving licenses every day, and I’m pretty sure most of them have no idea how to drive. I don’t mean how to operate a car, I’m talking about road etiquette, traffic rules and safety rules. The RTO is not considered to be one of the departments whose corruption affects daily life. But given that it unleashes bad drivers by the dozen every single day, the pathetic traffic situation is as much the fault of the RTO as it is the fault of bad planning. Many traffic jams are caused by indiscipline on the part of motorists. Drivers don’t follow lanes, they run stoplights, and they park where they want to. It gets scarier when these illiterate drivers take our their cars on the highway. I have seen people coming the wrong way on a freeway because they don’t want to drive the extra mile to take the u-turn. It’s no surprise that India has one of the highest road accident deaths in the country. It took forever for the RTO to make the use of helmets and seatbelts compulsory. And even now, the law is unsatisfactorily enforced in the big cities, and ignored in other places.

The corruption in the RTO is not limited to the issuance of driving licenses. It also extends to giving vehicles a Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificate. Most truckers, taxi drivers and transport vehicle drivers bribe the RTO left, right and centre to get PUCs for their vehicles, even though the vehicles would not have passed the test. Look at the sky on a usual day, and compare it to how it looks on the day taxis are on strike. The difference will tell you how much pollution is released by cars driving on fake PUC certificates. The pollution levels in most Indian cities are very high, and I firmly believe that the corruption of the RTO is to blame for the vehicular pollution in the country. The pollution has a ripple effect on one’s quality of life, and on the incidence of diseases like asthma and bronchitis.

The only way to solve the problems related to automobile pollution and road safety is to take a look at the decay in the RTO first. If efforts are made to ensure that only people with all requisite skills pass driving tests, traffic discipline would improve manyfold. I would even go so far as to say that every driver in the country should be re-tested. I’m not sure how many would pass. The systems and processes should be strengthened to make sure that polluting vehicles are not given PUC certificates. An improvement in air quality across urban areas in India can only do good to the quality of people’s lives.

As for my next encounter with the corruption in the RTO - I hope there won’t be one.

Photo Courtesy: 24thcentury

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