Editorial:1,14,293 Households Would Welcome a Reliable Public Transport Option

Owning a mode of conveyance, even an imported bicycle, will become more expensive from 01 April 2012 onwards, once the Union Budget kicks into effect. This latest development, when taken up in consonance with the growing hesitation among banks to jump at every vehicle loan application, leads to a situation where one can safely assume that the number of new cars on Sikkim roads will not be growing at the same clip as they did in the decade between 2001-2011. A host of factors came together in the past decade to inject an explosion of vehicles in Sikkim, and while this might be all fine if one were looking at vehicle ownership as a sign of prosperity, the traffic jams here led to a mistaken notion that there were enough private vehicles in Sikkim to justify the absence of a decent public transport system here. But we get ahead of the story here. Let’s begin with the vehicle ownership statistics in Sikkim as revealed in the data for households released by the Census of India [for 2011].
Sikkim had around 1.04 lakh households in 2001 and this grew to 1,28,131 households in 2011. While the population grew at its slowest rate in recent time at 12.6% between 2001-2011 [against 33.6% growth between 1991-2001], four wheel vehicle ownership grew nearly four-times. Where 2.3% of the families in Sikkim owned a car/jeep in 2001, the 2011 headcount revealed that this has now grown to 8.3%. Comparison against the national average for such ownership provides some interesting statistics. While back in 2001, car ownership in Sikkim at 2.3% was slightly lower than the national average of 2.5% of the households, in 2011, it was nearly double the national average of 4.7%. For those who would prefer real numbers, here it is: while 2,618 of the 1.04 lakh households in Sikkim owned a car in 2001, in 2011, this number had grown to 10,635 families out of the around 1.28 lakh households here. The increase, as mentioned, has been mind-boggling and the endless line of vehicles on the highways and town roads here also projects the mistaken notion that there are already too many vehicles on the road to also add the burden of a wider public transport system. But the latter is a wrong inference, because while many more families in Sikkim now own cars, the number of Sikkim households without any mode of conveyance is also staggering at 89.2% of the households here. Interestingly, at the national level, while much fewer families on average own a car, only 44.1% of the households own no mode of transportation. Again, for those who would prefer actual numbers – the Census of 2011 found that 1,14,293 households in Sikkim do not own any form of conveyance, neither a car, nor a scooter nor even a bicycle. This number was 1,00,548 in 2001. The point being made here is that nearly 90% of the households are in a cheap and reliable mode of transportation. The road network in Sikkim is already expansive and there are jeeps available to and from every corner of the State. People have recourse to only an occasional SNT bus in most places and private jeep services are expectedly more expensive than what a state operated bus would charge for the same journey. What is also sorely missed in Sikkim is a public transport option for shorter distances. Even the City Runner which has a well advised route connecting Gangtok to the suburbs and nearby towns has too few buses on the road compared the number of commuters who would use it if they were more frequent. The same applies to the districts. Fact remains that close to 90% of the population remains denied the option of using a state supported public transport, which, even if it were slower, would also be more reliable [against the tourist season vagaries of private operators], safer and cheaper. The policy makers should perhaps factor the interests of this sector in their future projections.