Car ownership has increased so rapidly over the past thirty years that many cities in the world are now 'one big traffic jam'. How true do you think this statement is? What measures can governments take to discourage people from using their cars?

Shivaji

was descended from a line of prominent nobles. India at that time was under Muslim rule: the Mughals in the north and the Muslim sultans of

Bijapur

and Golconda in the south. All three ruled by right of conquest, with no pretense that they had any obligations toward those who they ruled.

Shivaji

, whose ancestral estates were situated in the Deccan, in the realm of the

Bijapur

sultans, found the Muslim oppression and religious persecution of the Hindus so intolerable that, by the time he was 16, he convinced himself that he was the divinely appointed instrument of the cause of Hindu freedom—a conviction that was to sustain him throughout his life. Collecting a band of followers, he began about 1655 to seize the weaker

Bijapur

outposts. In the process, he destroyed a few of his influential coreligionists, who had aligned themselves with the sultans. All the same, his daring and military skill, combined with his sternness toward the oppressors of the Hindus, won him much admiration. His depredations grew increasingly audacious, and several minor expeditions sent to chastise him proved ineffective. When the sultan of

Bijapur

in 1659 sent an army of 20,000 under Afẕal Khan to defeat him,

Shivaji

, pretending to be intimidated, enticed the force deep into difficult mountain terrain and

then

killed Afẕal Khan at a meeting to which he had lured him by submissive appeals. Meanwhile, handpicked troops that had been previously positioned swooped down on the unwary

Bijapur

army and routed it. Overnight,

Shivaji

had become a formidable warlord, possessing the horses, the guns, and the ammunition of the

Bijapur

army. Alarmed by

Shivaji

’s rising strength, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb ordered his viceroy of the south to march against him.

Shivaji

countered by carrying out a daring midnight raid right within the viceroy’s encampment, in which the viceroy lost the fingers of one hand and his son was killed. Discomfited by

this

reverse, the viceroy withdrew his force.

Shivaji

, as though to provoke the Mughals

further

, attacked the rich coastal town of Surat and took immense booty.