From Madness towards Method

Be it your office pantry, or a weekend gathering of friends, when you run out of topics to gossip, all you have to do is drop in a word "traffic" and everyone one will suddenly find a story to say and gripe about the anomaly. A few socially active ones among us will take it a little forward by trying to propose a CSR initiative to regulate traffic in an area near the location of their work. But I personally believe that traffic regulation will be ineffective if the initiative doesn't involve the traffic police. I would be even better, if traffic police initiates and leads the initiative...which is why I was pleasantly surprised this morning as I was walking by the Police lines circle, as I watched the traffic police hard at work.

Standing by the sidewalk with my phone-camera, I could see that the police working with maddened determination to three things right the first time and then repeat it throughout the day, hoping to "train" the beast to comply with the order.

1. At the whistle, stop behind the stop line. Motorists wishing to take a right, stop to the right side of the road.
2. Allow the pedestrians to use the zebra crossing to cross the road
3. At the next whistle, allow the traffic flowing straight to go, while holding the traffic flowing right (or take a U-turn).
4. At the next whistle (when the traffic on the other side of the road is stopped), allow the held traffic to take a right or U-turn.

Repeat it!

Standing there and looking at the constant whistling and frantic gestures of the traffic police, I could realize that this job is so much easier said than done! The police might have chosen today, a holiday due to observance of Id-ul-fitr, to exercise this pilot but the traffic was still huge. Nevertheless, they seemed to have handled the traffic quite well.

But man! it was quite a sight to see vehicles neatly lined up against the stop-line to allow the pedestrians pass without fear of being run over! Finally, one small step towards method in what is the very essence of madness. Hope this pilot doesn't die at infancy, but grows and lives long enough to get into the subconscious mind of the average motorist to prompt him/her to follow the traffic rules.

Hitting the Road:Teaching module - Draft 1

Idea generated for schools so far

• Teach kids to make their own notebooks.
• Teach kids to make chalk piece

How does this help?

• non-availability of free notebooks @ govt schools
• Relevant vocational training
• potential means to earn

• Teach kids of appropriate age about technologies related to clean energy like solar energy
• How tap solar energy
• How the market is growing etc

How does this help?

• creating experts in a market of demand for the future
• All the soft-skills appreciated in a corporate environment
• committing to a task of reasonable difficulty and completing it on time
  
• being regular with work taken up and establishing proper communication about updates/possible delays

How does this help?

• time-management, probably study better while being good at extra-curricular
• develops proper attitude and work-ethics and improves job-prospects
• Safety
• Basic fire-safety
• First-aid and emergency response
• Details of phone numbers, addresses of hospitals in vicinity.
  

How does this help?

• Duhh......!
• Community activity
• Some kind of an activity that sensitized them

• Community activity
• Some kind of an activity that sensitized them to importance of sanitation, public health, environment etc.
  

British aid to India?

BBC Radio broadcast a short debate between two people, one from a British pro-taxpayer's organization called The Taxpayer's Alliance arguing against the British (taxpayer's) aid to India and the other from Christian Aid arguing for aid it.

The point behind the former's argument is the country has a fast growing economy and has a lot of money at its disposal. India should find means to redistributing its wealth itself instead of depending on British tax payers. Christian Aid says that taxation is the only means the Indian government has for redistributing its wealth, but faces unique problems like a large poor, population with very less means to earn their living, socially exclusion like the caste system, all of which call for immediate attention instead of waiting for a set of social reform policy to be implemented effectively.

I feel that a revamp in public administration, policy making and enforcement especially for poverty alleviation on part of Indian government is due even if this discussion is not considered. If the British funding is indeed revoked, it would be a blessing in disguise since (hopefully) it will put Indian government in a tight(er) spot and push for some innovative solution.