I received a mail from Professor Surinder Nath from the Department of Anthropology, Delhi University. He writes, “You must have read about the 2% and 4%road tax proposed by the Government on new four wheelers purchased with effect from January 2005.

“How justified this tax is in the wake of such bad roads. It was despite the assurance given by the CM that the roads are in good condition all over Delhi. But if you move out on Delhi roads you will find it for yourself that if not more, at least 45-50% Delhi roads are in real bad shape and have deep ditches or they are so uneven that no one gets a smooth ride for more than 100 metres in one go.

“The patch work which has been done on these roads does not even wipe off the tears of the road users and most of the accidents are caused due to poor condition of the roads. Looking at such a state of affair is it justified to levy the new Road Tax to the car buyers? If that were so then the next would be a tax on breathing the polluted air. And paying the 4-5 times enhanced price of using water, which is again full of dirt and highly impure and contaminated for oral consumption.

“Next in the line would be a super tax on walking on the road or using the pavements (if al all they are there- as most of them have been merged in the roads or occupied by encroachers or pavement dwellers) I hope you consider this issue important and try to generate public opinion through your column.”

I feel the tax is justified in the sense that a normal person travelling in buses pays four times the road tax than a car owner pays in his life span. But yes, I think MCD should now start planning about building high quality roads in Delhi. And this should not be the case for only big roads of the city. All small colony roads should also be properly maintained. And first and foremost they should remove all the encroachments as well as unnecessary speed breakers from the roads.