Toll Taxes are Absurd

Today I was going to office and there are two toll tax booths on the way from Fort Kochin to Willingdon Island (one for bridge and another for insurance on island). This is regular phenomenon and I did not notice it for long time (6 months), but then I was going by ferry which make me reach over there in Rs 2 yes believe it. It is efficient system but senior managers go by car only.
...hmm so absurdity part is that Mr Santosh was very agitated by this all (although he is paying it for so many years now). His line of argument was I am paying my taxes as a good citizen and then I pay cess for so many things over and above the tax. Then I should not be paying this toll every few kilometers. What for we pay the tax if government can not provide us with good roads and bridges and all. These are the things for what we pay the taxes. Moreover if toll has to be collected it has to be done by government rather than being left to some contractor who dont use even 20% of total income to maintain these roads and bridges. Waiting there waste a lot of time that is productive time. And my friends in this case it is regular road, its not some special road which save you some traffic or extra time hence there should be no tax at such places at all.

In the same line of argument ...he continued when we buy a vehicle we pay road tax that must be sufficient for these maintenance and all other expenses. If we have to pay the toll tax after paying the road tax than what is the use of road tax at all. It is double taxation and at the same time it waste a lot of time.

These are pretty sound arguments and these forces us to rethink the whole system. In fact when we go deeper then we come to realize that there is toll tax mafia they have got all the contacts and win the contract to collect the toll tax. hence government is loosing people are loosing it is just a few of politicians and people in power that benefit out of that. We should really start some sort of movement against it. These are inefficiencies of our system we should do away with as soon as possible.

Over all this non-sense inefficiency there are 3-4 cops at every junction managing the traffic. It is not understandable where a single red light could have worked better than these 5 policeman why we are wasting manpower. And believe me these 5 people actually create the chaos rather than managing the traffic which a red light can manage better than these guys.

Only conceivable point that can come in favour of these toll taxes is that we want to discourage the people from using private vehicle and use more of public transport (e.g. in this case ferry service is more efficient than your own car). But even this argument does not hold good as these tolls are not high enough to
 discourage the people. In fact whole system seems to be designed to profit the local powerful people without giving any consideration to common-man.

I wish and I hope some day we shall be able to overcome these inefficiencies.