As part of the Daan Utsav in October, Qwikcilver Solutions Pvt Ltd picked Road Safety. There were two parts to this : a campaign to increase awareness with the general public, and a specific training session on “Drive Safely” conducted within the organization.

The Volunteers carried out a campaign on Road Safety at the Forum Mall Traffic Junction. For about 3 hours, they walked around with placards drawing attention to road safety. Be Aware. Be Safe. The volunteers were careful not to distract moving vehicles, they walked along the streets where the traffic was halted at the signal to share the message and increase awareness.

There was also an interesting attempt to use “Gandhigiri” for this cause.
The first two chocolates were given to riders using helmets. Then, the idea germinated. The next chocolate was handed over to a rider who had his helmet on his hand with the words “Wear your helmet, so you can continue to eat more chocolates!” It had a great impact! Not just on the person, but others around as well! And so, we gave away chocolates to errant drivers to nudge them towards safety. Drivers who were
… without helmets
… with helmets but not using them properly
… using cellphones
… riding bikes on the footpath
… driving on the wrong side

Here is a sample of the placards used

The Drive Safely Session exhorted participants to cultivate a mindset for Safety. With over 78% of accidents resulting from choices made by drivers ( speed, loading, drinking, dangerous driving, ..) the focus was on defensive driving and saying “No” to distracted driving. The participants signed a pledge, affirming their commitment to road safety, and this was also carried further to others in the organization.

As you know, we, at The Arundhati Foundation are doing our bit trying to find effective ways to tackle the menace of potholes and road safety, and trying to partner BBMP and Bangalore Traffic Police in the process. Last week I got a pleasant surprise when I got a call from BBMP. The person on the phone told me that the complaint I had registered was attended to, and will be closed. I am sharing my experience using BBMP SAHAAYA
This is to urge all fellow-citizens in Bangalore to utilize this platform for driving civic improvements. At the very least, we will have a true picture of the potholes that matter to our citizens!

What’s the story?

Back in January, I discovered BBMP SAHAAYA. This site allows citizens to voice their concerns and complaints related to various categories: Garbage, Roads, Potholes, Encroachment, Corruption, Stray Animals, Pollution, Welfare, Parks, Illegal Activity, Sanitation and Health, etc. And under each category, there are some “complain types” to choose from.

I decided to check out this site, and to see how effective it is.

On Feb 01, 2015, I registered complaint number 9740483; Category = Road Maintenance, Category Type = Potholes. It was about a pothole-strewn road near the Ambedkar Institute of Management Studies, Appareddipalya, Bangalore 560008. The site allowed me to identify the spot via Google maps, and to upload photographs as evidence. The site automatically identifies the department that will need to address this. The priority is also assigned automatically – the user has no control over it. In this case, it was marked as MEDIUM.

I got an immediate acknowledgement, and a message that this will be attended to in 2 weeks. I was impressed. But after two weeks I realized that there was really no movement. When I went to the Sahaaya site, I could not do any active follow up online. I kept at it for several days.

On June 10, 2015, I registered another complaint: number 10504918. I referenced my previous complaint, and also stated that I had no way to query progress against my old complaint. Once again, I got an immediate response saying that the issue will be tackled in 2 weeks. I tracked this again for several days, but saw no progress. I was quite disappointed, and had the feeling that the Sahaaya program was just non-functional.

Then out of the blue, on Sep 17, 2015, I got the phone call from BBMP. I was told the problem has been attended to, and my complaint will be closed. I also got an SMS message saying the same. In fact, I got two of them – one for each of the complaints I had registered.

I went to the site to check, and I was disturbed to find that the road was still in a bad state. This weekend, I made another visit to the site. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that the potholes have been filled, and the road has been tarred! I have provided the feedback via the site that over 6 months to tackle a problem is not acceptable. Further, problems should not be marked “closed” prematurely. Intent is not enough, we need actual closure.

There has been a lot of hue and cry about the state of our roads and potholes in the past few days. Many innocent lives have been lost on our city roads in the past few months. It is heartening to see individuals trying to bring in a change by raising petitions through change.org. We, at The Arundhati Foundation are doing our bit trying to galvanize BBMP and meeting the authorities in the traffic department. All such activities definitely help in putting pressure on civic authorities. All the public pressure might have prompted the action in BBMP, and not just my complaint. However, the complaint at least gave the coordinates of the location, and probably directed the repair plans.

I urge all of you to report potholes and bad roads using this site. Don’t be passive, don’t be indifferent, don’t shrug it off with “nothing works”. All it needs from you is just a few moments to register your concern. After a complaint is registered, the progress may not be to your satisfaction, but there is some evidence that someone is monitoring and tracking, although not all aspects are visible to the citizen. There is a lot of room for improvement, and it is through usage and feedback that we will get this improvement. I, for one, will continue to leverage Sahaaya. This is an attempt to share the experience broadly, so more citizens use the available platform, demand accountability and transparency, and make Sahaaya even better.

We arrived at the school campus off Sarjapur road at about 11:30. The motto of the school is in bright yellow, and says “Our Tomorrow Is Today”. I felt this was quite apt, for we are aiming to inculcate the values of road safety in our young students today, with the hope for a better tomorrow when they grow up and lead by example.

Soon after lunch, the meeting area was buzzing with the chatter of the young students. Shubhi kicked off the presentation and quickly engaged the crowd.

The statistics always hit hard. When Shubhi drove home the point “More people die in road accidents in India, than of AIDS; it is equivalent to a jet-liner crashing every day!!” The impact on the students and teachers was palpable.

They sat up and took notice of the pie chart that says more than 90% accidents can be avoided by defensive driving ( no overspeeding, no overloading, no driving under influence ).

When Shubhi discussed the Tips for Pedestrians, Riders and Children, the young students quickly grasped the reasons behind, and their importance.

One boy chimed in about the motorcycles that ride on footpaths. Shubhi exhorted the students to stand up to wrong behavior and calmly, politely ask the person to get back on the road. She shared her own example: when she urged a young scooter rider to take his helmet out of his bag and wear it. “Your bag does not need protection, your head does! Your mother will be waiting for you at home”.

I saw Shubhi taking a pause and a deep breath when it came to the slide “Why do we do this?”. It is not easy to talk about Aru, to talk of her accident, and how we wish no family loses a loved one to road accidents. I know what she was going through at the moment, but she held her poise in front of the large crowd. I know the word courage comes from “corage” or “cor” which means “heart, innermost feelings”. Shubhi’s effort exemplified this with the courage and resolve derived from our wonderful daughter’s wonderful memory.

This time, we did something different. We introduced a Pledge. The children whole-heartedly joined Shubhi in making the Pledge. I had goosebumps when the voice of 180 children in the room rose in unison to say “I shall follow the rules of the road…”. Shubhi asked the students to sign our Foundation Book if they believe in the Pledge, and if they will carry it forward. It was heartening to see them all come forward to sign their names! We think the Pledge is a great call to action, and not just passive listening.

We also shared a brief animated video created by Toyota Safety Education Program. This is targeted to young school children, and it certainly helped to reinforce the message.

After the talk, students and teachers came forward to talk to us. It was clear that the brief talk had some impact on them. They shared some concerns, they shared their desire to take the message forward, some want to connect us with other schools. We think even if a handful of the audience take the message to heart, it will make a difference!

A big thanks to Riad Mahmood and Priya ma’am, and Sandhya Lovekar who helped organize today’s session.

Students and Teachers of Head Start, we welcome your feedback.

-Sanjay

We took one more step forward in our mission – we filled a couple of potholes today. Aru met her accident on a pothole-ridden rubble-strewn road. When we filled these potholes, the thought going through our minds was “if only…if only… that road had been good”.

It is no longer sufficient for us to sit back and comment on the state of affairs. There is a “junoon” that makes us go ahead and do something.

We had identified the two potholes on Cambridge Road, Bangalore – On the corner of the street where Canara Bank is.  GPS coordinates: 12°58’22.1″N 77°37’36.3″E  ( You can check it out on Google Maps )

The state of the potholes After is seen in the picture above.

The “Before” picture is here

Today morning at 6:30 AM, we loaded the car with the material and went to the spot. We wanted to ensure that we did not affect any traffic. Using traffic cones to demarcate the work area, the two of us cleaned up the potholes and poured the Shellmac in. After tamping it in place, we thought there was still a depression in the ground, so we repeated the process. It took us about an hour to complete the work.

There were a few people who came to us to enquire; some made appreciative comments; one person stopped his car and took photos; one person said we should leave it to the people employed for such work; but there were a couple of them who offered to help, and joined us. After tamping the Shellmac into place, we drove the car a few times over the pothole. I have read that this “rolling” helps the compaction.

Work In Progress

A brief note on the material we used:

• Shellmac – a cold mix for filling the pothole
• A tamping tool – to ram the Shellmac into the pothole where it binds together
• Traffic Cones – to cordon off the work area
• Cleaning Material – brushes, brooms, buckets
• Work Gloves

Shellmac is delivered in 50 kg bags, so it was a task in itself to divide it into smaller lots so we could carry the material to the site.  For the two potholes we used approximately 45 kg of Shellmac. It gets compacted as we do the tamping.

This first attempt has given us a feel for what it takes to fill potholes. We understand some of the logistics, the time required, the challenges of procurement of material, and the transportation to the required place. We now need to monitor the outcome – does the pothole start forming again? How soon? What factors contribute to longevity of the repair?

Our individual effort will continue – we will do it on a scale that we can manage. We realise it is big a task to take on the pothole-ridden roads of Bangalore. But with like-minded people, and many hands working together, this is feasible. Hopefully, this will resonate with the Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives that many companies are taking up. It can be a great team-building exercise, and it can have a deeper social impact on how we see and use our facilities. It can also help build awareness on road safety.  This is not to take away the responsibility from the municipality, hopefully it puts more pressure on the system to a better job in the first place.

The second session of training on road safety was conducted at NPS Indiranagar on the 10th of August. The audience comprised over 250 students from the 5th, 6th, and 7th standard.

This time, I had taken a video which was given to us by the traffic police. This is a video created by the Toyota Safety Education Program. Unfortunately, the due to a technical glitch while the video played, the audio could not be heard. We did not go through the video. The little ones and I were very disappointed.

However, we had a short interactive session. And, as usual, these young NPSites were enthusiastic and outspoken. It was a delight to know that they are well conversant with most rules on traffic safety and I am pretty confident that they will be exemplary citizens.

Sorry about that video, children! But as promised, I will come by some other time to share this with you.

Many thanks to Ms Shantha Chandran, the coordinators, and teachers of NPS for helping the Foundation make a start in training young children. It means a lot to have NPS Indiranagar, Arundhati’s alma mater helping us take the baby steps.