Pay and drive: FASTags could help flag off a road-pricing scheme in India

The expanding use of FASTags for the payment of toll on highways should be seen as an opportunity to formulate and articulate a clear strategy on road-pricing and public transport. The ministry of road transport and highways has made the use of FASTags—essentially windshield stickers with embedded radio frequency chips that can be read by sensors at toll plazas—mandatory from 15 December and cash counters will be steadily shrunk at the 500-plus toll plazas around the country to make cashless payments the norm.

This should have been thought of long ago, when toll plazas were mushrooming on major national and state highways, but our venal political system preferred cash. It is an open secret that cash collections are often used by toll operators to pay off politicians who may have done them some favours.