The answer still is: Traffic.
Black humour now has mushroomed on the subject. Times of India Mirror reported on Jan 1 2009: "Death has a five day week...almost". You are less likely to get killed on a Pune road on Thursdays and Sundays.
Not just that. Times of India reported on December 17, 2008: drowning,poisoning, fire, by falling, electrocution, lightning strikes, due to firearms are also deadlier than terror.
"According to the Planning Commission, the social cost of road accidents in India stands at Rs. 55,000 crore annually. This constitutes 3% of the country's GDP." (Times of India, December 12, 2008)
The cost of terrorism is certainly less than 3% of GDP.
Marathi news daily Pudhari पुढारी reported on Sunday December 08, 2008:
“Pune has 2400 (road) accidents in a year involving 450 deaths.”
Considering this stat, terrorism- even of the latest kind- is a side-show.
Shame on us! The Greediest Generation.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN said in NYT on December 07, 2008:
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation,” that classic about our parents and their incredible sacrifices during World War II. What I’ve been thinking about actually is this: What book will our kids write about us? “The Greediest Generation?” “The Complacent Generation?” Or maybe: “The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on My Visa Card.”
Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today…”
Should be.
But I don’t see them anywhere. Most of the middle-class kids I see are highly conformists. They want to drive their own vehicle- a big one at that.
Carl Sagan has said:
“…Some of the habits of our age will doubtless be considered barbaric by later generations- perhaps for insisting that small children and even infants sleep alone instead of with their parents; or exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery and corruption as a way of life; or keeping pets; or eating animals and jailing chimpanzees; or criminalizing the use of euphoriants by adults; or allowing our children to grow up ignorant.”
India is already guilty of “…exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery and corruption as a way of life …”
If Sagan were to be alive and visit Pune now, he would have surely included “keeping public transport paralysed while encouraging more and more private vehicles on lawless roads of Pune” to his list.
‘So do you fancy staying in and getting obese or going out and getting murdered?
The Spectator 2007
My caption:
‘So do you fancy staying in and getting obese or going out and getting killed on a Pune road while driving?’