The world owes the emergence of automobile on the road as it were in 1892 to Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler (1834-1900), an engineer, industrial designer and industrialist of what is now Germany. The engine that he invented jointly with Wilhelm Maybach was fancifully called Daimler’s Dream fulfilling the desire for a high speed engine useful in locomotion and transportation. Their invention of 125 years vintage has unwittingly resulted in a virtually nightmarish scene in all overcrowded cities across the world with cars of myriad brands choking their streets as well as roads connecting them such as Bengaluru and Mysuru, to take an example nearer home. The contraption, currently made affordable to a rapidly expanding number of citizens through irresistible loan facilities, has eminently fulfilled the Daimler’s transportation part of the dream, but is well on its way to bring locomotion to a virtual halt, the automobile turning to assume the monstrous Frankenstein image. Hardly anybody is looking anxious while Daimler’s dream has choked the cities all over the world.

Administrations are apparently not giving up in their plans and acts to keep the locomotion in motion on the streets and roads. One-way stretches, speed limits, flyovers, widening of roads, increasing the number of lanes, traffic signal lights, road humps, barricades and the failed odd-even number rule experimented in the National Capital Region of Delhi have only partly addressed the locomotion problem.

The larger and more important issues of (a) emissions from aged and ill-maintained automobiles causing pollution leading to lung diseases, (b) over-exploitation of non-renewable fossil fuels, (c) road mishaps with rising number of fatalities, (d) indebtedness of the nation by meeting the ever-rising import bill and so on are only talked about in various circles and debated in conferences with no signs of change for the good of all, except the automobile manufacturers. Even the top brass in the government, moving about in convoys of cars are personification of irresponsibility in reining in the automobile disaster in the country. None of them have a moral right to ask the people at large to be frugal in the use of automobile for locomotion.

The connect among the number of residents in any city, the number of automobiles in its boundary and the limit of area defining the city doesn’t need knowledge of rocket science to understand. The administration in the city state of Singapore has just shown the way out, namely putting a cap on the number of cars on its roads. Can such a measure have any chance of succeeding in India? is a question begging for an answer.