That’s No Way to Drive a Bus

India and its Dysfunctions: Death on the Road

Death on the Goa–Mumbai Highway

The ill-fated bus hurtled down the narrow two-lane highway. It was 3:30 a.m. on March 19, 2013. Fifty-two souls were on board, making their way from Goa, a tiny state on India’s west coast known for its trendy beaches and Portuguese heritage, up to India’s largest metropolis, Mumbai — a fifteen-hour trip.

It was pitch black. The travelers were resting fitfully, doing their best to sleep as the bus bounced from pothole to pothole, speeding up and slowing down as it tried to overtake vehicles while avoiding frontal collisions with vehicles coming from the other direction. The driver was going well over the speed limit; some passengers made their way up to the front of the bus to tell him to slow down, to no avail. Four hours into his shift, the driver was counting the minutes until he would turn the wheel over to the backup driver, on the other side of the river up ahead.

The bus was traveling on NH66,[1] a major national highway (hence the “NH”) starting from the southernmost tip of India in the state of Tamil Nadu, that runs one thousand miles along the western coast facing the Arabian Sea, all the way up to Mumbai. As of 2018, ambitious plans are underway to widen and improve the road, turning it into a four-lane highway — or even six lanes on some stretches — but as is common with infrastructure projects in India the plans are moving slowly, if at all, due…