Opinion | The Gadkari plan for behavioural change on roads

Thirty-five years ago a Maruti 800 changed the way we drove. Last week Nitin Gadkari, Union minister for road transport and highways, got the approval of Parliament for a new law, which if implemented in spirit and substance, could give another drastic makeover to the way we behave (if you can call it that) on the road and implicitly another nudge to India’s efforts to imbibe a rules-based regime.

As most would say, this couldn’t have come sooner. Anecdotally, because it is so ubiquitous, we accept wrong side driving as a way of life, jumping lights as a fine art, bullying pedestrians off the zebra crossing as the accepted routine, and of course helmetless driving as the unofficial norm.