Three-dimensional transport is the hero our civilisation deserves, and quite frankly, the one it (desperately) needs right now, given the traffic volumes!
However, there are several problems that need to be worked out first.
Three-dimensional transport – sounds like an idea straight out of a science-fiction book, isn’t it? Well, to be honest, the concept was indeed popularised by a science-fiction film in the late 1980s.
But what exactly is three-dimensional transport? It refers to vehicles travelling in a third direction, or along a third axis – up and down, sideways and forward or backwards. Flying cars, for example. Or cars moving through tunnels.
Our transport sector globally is largely two-dimensional. It is horizontal – vehicles either go straight or sideways. Three-dimensional transport is normally limited to aircraft, but even there, the third dimension is largely restricted to take-offs and landings, with the rest of the motion being limited to two dimensions.
We have come close to seeing three-dimensional, or 3D, transport – even if only in fiction. The concept came to light prominently in the 1989 sci-fi film, Back To The Future Part-II, which showed the then future (2015) as a year with flying vehicles which could take off and land anywhere.
Closer to reality, Uber is working on a flying car concept that is rumoured to be ready by 2020, while Elon Musk’s Tesla Company is working on a system of underground tunnels with entry and exit systems for high-speed travel.
But we need to ask: Are we prepared for 3D transport?
Our administration is not too enthused with the idea, especially in India.
In 2014, a pizza chain in Mumbai named Francesco’s claimed to have delivered pizza using a drone, and presented video footage of it as well. What followed was very predictable – Mumbai Police launched an investigation. Reason? Security concerns and permits from the relevant authorities, while justified, opened up a Pandora’s Box of questions, for anyone with access to a drone could do a whole variety of things with it to, say, attack others or for voyeurism. Even the Islamic State is reported to be attacking targets using grenade-lobbing drones.
At the ground level, things are different. A man shot down a drone flying over his property in Kentucky, and the court said he was well within his rights to do so. With devices like DroneGun, people can jam these devices mid-air, causing them to crash. These devices are also capable of blocking GPS and its Russian equivalent, GLONASS, reports Wired. Imagine if someone with such a device shot down a flying car.
For terrestrial, ground-based transport, the situation is similar. In Mumbai, flyovers and skywalks come with ‘view cutters’ to protect the privacy of buildings in the vicinity. While privacy is indeed important, and residents have the right to demand such measures, imagine the scenario with flying vehicles. You can’t fly over buildings that don’t give permission for it, making way for streets in the air. You can’t fly below or above another vehicle if there is a privacy concern.
The case is not too different for underground systems. Tunnelling, by nature, poses a myriad of problems, such as underground utilities, rock strata and weak foundations of older buildings. Further, if access to groundwater reserves is affected, that is another problem. Then, there is the problem of ventilation, oxygen supply and flushing out pollutants.
Security, the major concern, is not something to be overlooked. Both going up and down near a defence installation poses a risk. The second runway at Mumbai airport is not in active use because the path of the flight would take it over the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, which is a restricted flying zone. Imagine: flying cars around an air force base, and someone tosses out a grenade from the sky. Not a rosy scene. The same is the case in civilian areas.
We are not yet ready for 3D transport systems. There are numerous problems that need to be resolved before we venture into that area. While Uber and SpaceX can work on getting people there, the rest of us need to actively find solutions to the problems they could pose. After all, how long are we going to be stuck in traffic?
Note – There is a larger debate behind this issue , one of the prominent ethical issue being usage of UAV/drone technology in warfare or Defense. Everyone knwos what can be done with an UAV, but the question is whether every action that can be done with an UAV is ethical and more so is it legal ? and above all how to define, restrict and appropriately permit the usage of UAV has been a thorny issues before policy makers. How to regulate is the key question apart from the ethical dimensions of usages of UAV/drone. We will be publishing some well-researched and thoughtful articles on ethical dimension of this issue.( Post-Prelims)
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.