India, Sept. 11 -- Every morning and evening, the people on Delhi's streets grind to a halt. Cars crawl bumper to bumper, buses block entire lanes to jostle for passengers, and two-wheelers weave precariously through the chaos. For hundreds of thousands of commuters, the daily rush-hour ordeal has become a ritual of frustration. Yet amid this storm, the city's roads are missing one crucial element: the traffic police.

A ground check by HT along the Ring Road and Outer Ring Road during rush hour - between 9am and 11am, and again between 4pm and 7pm - revealed the absence of traffic personnel at many of the busiest choke points. Signals blinked unattended, intersections became free-for-alls, and gridlocks stretched for kilometres.

For com...