Hello Hyderabad!

It has been a week since I landed here. Life has been hectic and I have seen Hyderabad in a way never shown to me before - the lives of ordinary men and women in constant struggle to live their lives with dignity and happiness.

I sincerely believe that the state of public transport in a city roughly shows the regard the state has for its citizens. It shows the power of citizens to bargain and get want it wants - the means to mobility that is so vital in an economy. When the state fails, public transport virtually becomes non- existent, only to be replaced entirely by private sector which may or may not be kind enough to the lower strata of the society.

The importance of public transport in cities of India cannot be overstated. They are the means by which a vast majority of the population commute to their workplace. The local trains of Mumbai and the Metro rail in Delhi havr virtually become the lifelines of those cities.

That said, the neatness in publuc transport roughly correlates with the civic sense of the people and the commitment of the government towards the welfare of the people. The behaviour you observe in a local train or bus is characteristic of the city too. You need not do an analysis to deduct that Delhi is a dangerous place to live in for women. Just travel in the metro and have a look at the number of people staring at a woman travelling alone. That is the time when you feel thankful for the surveillance cameras.

Hyderabad has a reasonably good public transport system with buses plying to all parts of the city. I have not yet travelled by the local trains here and so I am not qualified to comment on them.

Any reasonable person can find out how rich or poor the general working population of a city is by looking at the cleanliness of its most popular form of transport. Delhi could claim to be rich or at least middle class by the standard. Mumbai is definitely middle class. Kolkatta is a dying city looking at the old taxis plying on its roads. Hyderabad is a city with a vast population of poor people who take the public transport to their workplace.

It is the duty of a government to provide a reasonably clean means of public transport to its citizens no matter how rich or poor they are. It is a matter of respecting human dignity, if nothing else. It is a fundamental facility to be ensured if the government actually wants to be a facilitator of development.