Rising car ownership in Indian cities triggers fights over parking

By The Straits Times | Created at 2025-01-05 09:51:31 | Updated at 2025-01-07 04:02:40 1 day ago

NEW DELHI - Private tutor Dahlia Sen Joshi visits several houses daily in Vasant Kunj, an upscale neighbourhood in south Delhi, and relies on her trustworthy Renault Kiger, a small sport utility vehicle.

But this comes with a nagging problem – finding a space to park her car.

Vasant Kunj is mostly made up of gated compounds with multi-storey blocks of flats, but no designated space for residents to park their cars. They do so on internal roads and empty spaces – an informal “first-come-first-served” arrangement in a place where families often have more than one car.

This makes it nearly impossible for visitors such as Mrs Sen Joshi, 50, to park their cars here.

“The level of aggression of people has grown so much that if you’ve parked in their place, even for an hour, they’ll scratch your car, slash your tyres or smash your windows,” she told The Straits Times.

Instead, she parks outside the compounds and walks several hundred metres to her students’ homes.

It is a wise call in a city that has seen a spike in parking-related fights, a worrying trend that other big Indian cities have also witnessed in recent years.

Rising private vehicle ownership, residential construction without the creation of adequate parking space and mismanagement of existing parking facilities have made parking in Indian cities a potential risk to one’s life and limb.

Social media in India is replete with videos of Indians fighting over parking. In one of the most-watched clips from 2023, an elderly man in Delhi rains blows from a stick on another man in a parking dispute.

In March 2024, a couple in Bengaluru were assaulted by a family for parking their car in an open space opposite their house.

And in Mumbai, India’s most densely populated city, even parking one’s two wheelers can invite death. In December 2024, a 41-year-old man was beaten to death with iron rods after he parked his scooter in front of the assailant’s shop.

Cities across India have seen a surge in private vehicle ownership as public transport remains inadequate.

As of March 2023, Delhi had 7.94 million vehicles, with 1,800 vehicles being added to the capital’s roads daily.

“Delhi simply cannot sustain these many cars,” said Mr Shubham Srivastava, programme officer for sustainable mobility at Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based non-profit. “All these vehicles obviously need a parking space and residents cannot park inside their own homes. So the cars are taking up scarce urban space, leading to fights.”

It is common to find residents in Delhi barricading the space in front of their house on public streets - a spot that technically belongs to everyone - with flower pots or other objects to obstruct others from parking their vehicles there. Some even put up aggressive posters on their gates, threatening to deflate tyres of cars parked outside their houses.

According to the latest available data, the police in Delhi registered 7,328 calls reporting violent disputes over parking until October 2023, more than the total of such calls received in the previous two years.

This problem of parking has become more acute in the last two decades as the population of Delhi and other big cities has grown exponentially with people migrating from other parts of the country. In Delhi, the 2001 population was recorded at 13.85 million and is now estimated to be more than 20 million.

This increase in population has led to a construction spree in the city that has unfolded with little foresight. Single storey homes have been replaced with multi-storied flats on the same plot of land, each floor housing separate families that own at least a car or two each, with no parking space developed for additional cars.

Mr Shiv Kumar Sharma, a 48-year-old finance professional has lived in one such congested neighbourhood of Delhi as a tenant, for over a decade. The first house did not have an allocated space for a tenant’s car, forcing him to park outside the gated compound on a public road.

This proved unsafe as his small hatchback’s battery was stolen four times, a common occurrence, he said, with others as well. So when Mr Sharma bought a bigger car - a Toyota Camry - in 2021, he first changed his house to one that has parking earmarked for the tenant as well.

“A safe parking spot was my main consideration when I was looking for my house,” he said.

In 2011, Delhi made it mandatory for all new buildings with an area between 100 and 1,000 sq m to have stilt parking but Mr Atul Goyal, president of United Residents Joint Action of Delhi, a body that represents over 2,500 resident welfare associations in the city, said this rule is not fully enforced.

It was time for “drastic action”, he told ST, including a rule that limits the number of vehicles per family in Delhi.

The development of multi-level car parks in commercial areas has also been slow and many existing ones are poorly maintained.

Vehicle owners in Delhi mostly park their vehicles for free on roadsides and other public spots near their homes, encroaching space meant for pedestrians and other public uses. A 2018 proposal to charge residents who park on roadsides was removed because of public opposition.

Ms Sonal Shah, executive director of the Centre for Sustainable and Equitable Cities, a not-for-profit that focuses on sustainable urban development, said there was “a big lack of political will to manage parking demand” in India.

She suggested that cities begin “pricing of streets (including in residential areas) so that no one thinks that a public street is free to park on”. “We need to remove the idea from people’s minds that parking is free, and that it is my birthright,” she told ST.

Enforcement of parking rules, such as those that prevent encroachment of footpaths and other no-parking zones, is also very poor, she added, creating a culture where “parking is accommodated first and not pedestrian infrastructure and public transport infrastructure.”

“Improving enforcement could really begin to change public behaviour as well, along with pricing,” added Ms Shah.