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By:

Minal Sancheti

2 May 2026 at 12:26:53 pm

Lost in Transport

Mumbai’s grand transport infrastructure is undermined by potholes, Poor discipline and a last-mile gaps that keeps it crawling Mumbai: It is morning time, and Pawan Khandelwal is all set to leave for work. A creative lead at an ad agency in Malad, Mumbai, Khandelwal should take 12 to 15 minutes to reach the office, but that rarely happens because of the traffic, poor road quality and lack of civic sense among co-drivers on the road. He mostly ends up reaching the office in 30 to 40 minutes....

Lost in Transport

Mumbai’s grand transport infrastructure is undermined by potholes, Poor discipline and a last-mile gaps that keeps it crawling Mumbai: It is morning time, and Pawan Khandelwal is all set to leave for work. A creative lead at an ad agency in Malad, Mumbai, Khandelwal should take 12 to 15 minutes to reach the office, but that rarely happens because of the traffic, poor road quality and lack of civic sense among co-drivers on the road. He mostly ends up reaching the office in 30 to 40 minutes. Khandelwal firmly believes that road construction is not a major issue for traffic. “The road under construction is not a big issue because they usually don’t take very long to repair the roads. But even after their work is done, it is not done perfectly. At times when they are digging up the road for other purposes, they often leave a bump or a pothole,” he said. He gives an example, “One can see it on the western express highway. There are so many bumps. We call it a highway, but we can’t even drive at 15 km/h because it is not fixed properly.” He also blames people for not following traffic rules, which adds to the problem. Traffic Woes Although there are coastal roads and metros available, the traffic still seems to be a problem for many residents. A media professional and a daily commuter, Charlene Flanagan has been travelling in Mumbai for many years now. There is not much difference in her experience of the traffic congestion. From her experience, she believes the coastal roads and metros have not completely accomplished the mission of curbing traffic congestion. She says, “As a resident of Mumbai and as a person with a valid driver’s licence, I would say the traf f ic hasn’t really changed. It is still as congested, and whether the coastal roads have helped depends on the time of the day you leave and whether you are going against the traffic or along with the traffic.” The pedestrians also face problems. Saloni Mehta, a theatre artiste, says, “I prefer walking to my destinations. For example, I live in Versova, and if I want to see a play in the Prithvi Theatre, I will take a half-hour walk. However, this one time, I could not reach the venue, not just because of the traffic but also because there were no pavements left to walk on. The roads are dug up, and every road is just half a road.” Mumbai’s average speed covered is 5.2 km per 15 minutes. During the peak traffic hours in the morning, when most people travel to their workplace, the average speed is 18.5 km/h. It is important to understand the issue and address it with a solution. Sudhir Badami, an author of the book ‘Matter of Equitability - Making Commuting in Mumbai Enviable’, explains why people still prefer to use cars over metros, “The metro line 3 has definitely taken away some car users. But it has not taken away sufficient numbers of car users to make a difference in the state of road congestion. The reason behind this is essentially the last-mile connectivity in areas where the Aqua Line or Line 7 operates, especially in suburban areas. In the city area, it is supported by good BEST services on the one hand, and taxis being available near the metro stations on the other hand. But most car users still opt for using their cars, as public transport currently does provide assured exclusivity, comfort and good frequency, not forgetting last mile connectivity. The Coastal Road sees very few cars compared to the number of cars on Mumbai’s Roads. Badami, as a transportation analyst, says, “Mumbai has approximately 16 Lakhs motor cars, out of which only about 55,000 seem to be using coastal roads. It is such a minuscule proportion for whom so much has been spent. This is largely because in the city, people don’t go from one end of the city to the other end. They normally start from in between and go somewhere in between. If there is not much time saving for the shorter stretches, then people are not likely to take it, and there will be continued congestion on city roads.” “In general, the necessity of the last-mile connectivity is an important part, but the greater part will be how to get car users onto the public transport,” says Badami. Public transport must provide near exclusivity, comfort and safety to a car-using commuter for migration to take place. This is where the importance of last-mile connectivity is felt. Air Pollution The slow-moving traffic also adds to the air pollution in the city several times more than when they are moving at optimum speeds, he says. Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Mumbai, Anil Kumbhare, denies that there is much traffic congestion in Mumbai as compared to five years back. He credits the coastal roads for curbing the traffic. He says, “Earlier, there used to be bumper-to bumper traffic near Haji Ali. That has come down drastically. As coastal roads shape, the traffic will go down.” He also adds that there is traffic congestion in the morning hours as people are travelling for work. But there is no traffic jam. Although coastal roads have helped, there are still pockets of the city that face traffic congestion every day. This can be solved with careful planning and execution.

Song Binbin and the Killing That Defined Mao’s Cultural Revolution

Mao’s Cultural Revolution

On August 5, 1966, Bian Zhongyun, vice-principal of the Girl’s Secondary School affiliated to Beijing Normal University, was beaten to death by students. This was the first murder in Beijing by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Many more killings would follow during what became known as ‘Red August’, perhaps as many as two thousand in Beijing alone.


Feeling marginalised after the failure of the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) that had led to perhaps as many as 3o million deaths from famine, Mao Zedong considered that the revolution in China was floundering, that the Communist Party of China was shifting rightward, toward economic liberalisation, and that his enemies were too entrenched in the Party bureaucracy. In Mao’s opinion, the revolution had removed the capitalists and landlords from power, but their ideological influence still remained.


Mao set out to destroy the four olds – old customs, culture, habits, and ideas – and, because he had decided that the Party bureaucracy was controlled by his political adversaries, he looked outside of the Party for his ‘revolution within the revolution’, especially to students, stating that ‘education has to be revolutionised, and the phenomenon of the rule of our schools by bourgeois intellectuals must not go on anymore.’ And the students, heavily indoctrinated from birth by Party ideology, were only too happy to oblige, often in the most violent forms possible, calling themselves ‘Red Guards’.


But Bian Zhongyun had been the vice-principal of no ordinary school. The Girl’s Secondary School affiliated to Beijing Normal University was prestigious. Among its students were the daughters of many of the Party’s senior cadre, including: Liu Tingting, daughter of Liu Shaoqi; Deng Rong, daughter of Deng Xiaoping; and Song Binbin, daughter of Song Renqiong. Liu Shaoqi was at the time considered a possible successor to Mao, and Deng Xiaoping and Song Renqiong were two of the ‘Eight Immortals’, founder members of the People’s Republic of China.


Liu Tingting, Deng Rong, and Song Binbin had all become Red Guards at the school, their family connections making them very aware of the political winds of change, more so than the schoolteachers and administrators who were soon to be their victims, their standard attire a military uniform with sleeves and trouser legs rolled up and sporting a red armband. But it was Song Binbin who was soon to emerge into the public eye. She was but 19 at the time.


On August 18th 1966, there was a million-strong rally for the Red Guards held in Tiananmen Square. Mao arrived in military dress unlike many other senior Party figures who had to rush home to change. Song Binbin was invited to tie a red armband around Mao’s arm, the photograph of the event bringing her fame (later infamy), Mao’s acceptance of the armband electrifying the Red Guard movement, spurring it onward. Mao told her she should change her name from Binbin, meaning ‘refined and gentle’, to Yaowu, meaning ‘militant’ – his blessing, perhaps, for the epidemic of violence now spreading across China.


But the Cultural Revolution would not be kind to Song Binbin as with many others of the Party faithful. Her own father, Song Renqiong, would be purged from the Party in 1968, and she and her mother would be placed under house arrest.


Later she would be sent into the countryside. Song Binbin graduated in 1975, earned a doctorate from MIT in 1989, and became a US citizen. She returned to China in 2003 during debates about the Cultural Revolution, becoming the ‘face’ of the Red Guards in the documentary ‘Morning Sun,’ though only her silhouette appeared. She later defended herself, claiming naivety and emphasizing her opposition to violence, asserting her gentle nature true to her name, Binbin.


After the Cultural Revolution, in 1981, despite pleas for justice from her husband, Wang Jingyao, prosecuting authorities declined to investigate the murder of Bian Zhongyun any further – the names of those involved perhaps too sensitive to proceed.


In 2012, Song Binbin made a formal apology to Wang Jingyao, and once more in 2014 when she visited her old school, bowing before the bust of Bian Zhongyun. But she died of cancer at the age of 77 on 16th September of this year without confessing or naming names.


In her remarkable book of remembrance, Victims of the Cultural Revolution, Wang Youqin, offers up a tentative and tantalising explanation for Bian Zhongyun’s being the first murder in Beijing – apart, that is, from Mao’s general and violent invective against educators. Bian Zhongyun was quite the egalitarian, had initially blocked Liu Tingting’s entrance to the school through poor grades, and believed that the daughters of the elite should not monopolise leadership positions in student bodies. Perhaps the Cultural Revolution had given these daughters of the elite the chance to seize the power that they wanted, the excuse they needed to exact their horrific revenge. I think Mao would have been proud.


(The author is a novelist, retired investigator with an abiding passion for Chinese history)

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