Guest post by SANJAY SRIVASTAVA

Our public life is full of vacuous gestures that seek to define public good. The rise of the elite-class bicycle as a symbol of mass welfare is the latest in the addled and self-serving history of ‘ordinariness’ in the republic.

TOI photo: Sanjay Sekhri

Over the past few years, the sports bicycle with bells and whistles and its rider whose riding gear might cost more than a month’s salary paid to a professional car driver have become icons of an urban renewal movement. We so perfectly walk in the footsteps of meanings borrowed from elsewhere that we erase our own imprints. Does the fancy bicycle – the kind sported by Arvind Kejriwal in his Dussehra Car Free Day  ride in Delhi —  hold the key to a improved urban environment characterised by reduced pollution levels and, more importantly, ease of access for the city’s most disadvantaged populations? Far from it. For, even our gimmicks are of the cruellest kind.

Continue reading The meaning of the sports bicycle: Sanjay Srivastava →