Introduced last year the Union Government’s ‘cashless treatment scheme’ for road crash victims of the Golden Quadrilateral and North-South and East-West corridors covering over 13,500 km of National Highway has helped many accident victims. Under the proposed scheme all victims will get free treatment for the first 48 hours, which is the crucial and decisive time, at hospitals located nearest to the crash site. Victims do not have to pay for the expenditure up to Rs 30,000. Government is mooting to raise road cess and motor vehicle insurance to garner additional funds. At present Road Transport Ministry receives about Rs 17,000 crore as road cess from users annually as part of toll tax collections. In fact insurance companies have been the driving force behind providing immediate medical care to road crash victims in developed countries. The project has been introduced on experimental basis in areas where toll tax collection is high and traffic flow is heavy. But here again the politically alienated State of Jammu and Kashmir stands to lose benefits. On an average the State’s roads claim more lives than militancy or any calamity. The condition of the roads is bad and connectivity poor, except the National Highway stretch, and are more accident prone. The vehicle population is outdated, poor awareness and lack of road sense among the drivers is common. There is no toll tax collection except for few points on the National Highway. The issue had seen protests and at one point near Samba the politically motivated crowd damaged and rampaged the toll tax post. Today the State stands to lose more than the gains from all the protests and demonstrations against the toll tax collections. Blame for such poor record goes to policy makers and politicians who just for few votes have surrendered all safety norms to be implemented. Under such a circumstance it is the people who stand to lose in terms of life and facilities and not the politicians.
