Not an arm chair critic

Every effort is a step towards driving change. Change from your status quo to something which you wish to improve.

A casual conversation and observation of our daily traffic woes resulted in a campaign against illegal entry of truckers in Mumbai city during peak traffic hours. I am glad that this initiative saw acceptance and empathy from office goers and citizens alike.

This is just a beginning and we must ensure we build up momentum to sustain this activity to ensure compliance by traffic police.

Happy truck spotting.

http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/101077/cj-fights-against-false-promises-of-builders.html

http://youtu.be/86WDd_hEJvM

Maverick Communicator: Efforts drive results

Maverick Communicator: Efforts drive results: I am an eternal optimist. I am also a firm believer in the thought : if you don't like something, change it, don't sit cribbing about it an...

Efforts drive results

I am an eternal optimist.

I am also a firm believer in the thought : if you don't like something, change it, don't sit cribbing about it and hoping somebody else would come and change it for you.

Happy to post a incident, which is a testimony to my above said belief. Its called a small movement called "Truckspotting".

It all started with a simple observation of too many heavy vehicles (read trucks) around us while travelling to office from Kandivali to Lower Parel through western express highway. A daily commute which should take estimated 1 hr was stretched to 1hr 30-40 min.

Reason - Traffic congestion and truck breakdown/blocking your right of way on already congested streets of Mumbai. 

Mind you "Trucks are not supposed to ply in city during peak hours - morning 07:00 am to 11:00 am". But they do. Having zeroed on the problem  "Trucks should not be allowed to enter city during peak hours" we decided to document the fact that they are violating the rule.

And we ( me and my fellow travelers - Prasanna Khare & Ashwani Raina) gave birth to a small movement called "Truckspotting". Idea was to gather as much information about the trucks violating the rule - A picture of truck with its no., and mentioning where it was spotted and at what time is all we had to do for a period of 7 days. Refer to earlier posts on the same blog and you would find the documentary evidence.

Compiled this information and wrote to Jt. CP - Traffic police Mumbai and also filed a report to a media network - (CNN IBN - CJ network).CNN IBN story

Then a long wait for 2 months for things to move. But things moved for sure.

Today was a surprise moment for us. We could see early results of the movement.  We hardly spotted trucks in our commute today. Also justifying our belief that police are taking action was a mail received from Sr. Inspector of police, Borivali Traffic division stating that they have booked 347 heavy vehicles thereby helping the cause of easing traffic congestion.

reply by borivali traffic.

Hide Details

FROM:

• pi.traffic.borivali@trafficpolicemumbai.org 

TO:

• jcptraffic@trafficpolicemumbai.org

CC:

• ashishlimaye@yahoo.com

Message flagged

Wednesday, 28 March 2012 7:38 PM

Respected Sir,

    We received your Email and thanks for your valuable suggestions.
Borivali Traffic division taken strong action against Heavy Vehicles.
In Month of Feb 2012 Borivali Traffic Division booked 347 heavy
vehicles in different traffic offences.and there is No Entry for Heavy
vehicle in Mumbai City in between 07-00am to 11-00am.
thanking You,


Senior inspector of Police,
Borivali Traffic Division, mumbai

Bravo Mumbai police.

I only hope that they sustain this disciplinary actions and we have a easy commute daily. 

Moral of the story - Efforts Drive Results. 

#Truckspotting day #3

Wednesdays it seems are for Trucks.

Apart from the usual sighting, it was a sorry sight to see ambulance caught between two big truckers, and ambulance guys finding it hard to wriggle out of that situation.

Chaotic scene everywhere on Western Express Highway, no wonder we spend so much time on road wrestling for our own space.

Imagine plight of two wheelers, and other smaller vehicles.  All we ask for is a implementation of ban in entry of trucks during peak hours. Pictures below tell the entire story.

#Truckspotting development

Happy to share that we already have 6 people volunteering for it. Thats not much, but better then three (original team).

Have found traction with CNN IBN - Citizen Journalist initiaitve, and hopefully they will see enough merit once we have suffecient documentary evidence. (Picture, time of day, truck no, place).

For benefit of all I have put these pictures out here.

We intend to keep this initiaitve live for at least a week, and submit the documentation to traffic CP by end of Jan'2012.

#Truckspotting

So What exactly is truckspotting.

Simply put it is an initiative to stop entry of trucks (read heavy vehicles) within city limits (Western Suburbs - Dahisar towards south mumbai, Eastern Suburbs - Mulund towards South Mumbai) during peak traffic hours. 

As per Mumbai traffic police, (022-24937755/24937746/25940303 , http://www.trafficpolicemumbai.org/) entry of heavy vehicles is not allowed within city limits between morning 7 to 11 and evening 6 to 10. This means, we the common citizens of Mumbai, should have access to the narrow expressways (western or eastern) minus the heavy vehicles.

That said, number of heavy vehicles, find their way in the city by means of bribing the traffic cops. Result is we get rowdy truckies driving freely, blocking our already choked roads. No wonder we find lot of trucks conked of on a flyovers, parked on sideways, not allowing to overtake, or simply blocking your way.

All this at peak time between 7 to 11 in morning and 6 to 10 in evening.

Your and mine net loss, we loose out on peace of mind on road, we either get late to office, or miss out on spending some time with our family while going back home.

I understand it is not healthy to point out only one form of vehicle (trucks) and blame them for all traffic ongestion problems, but if we were to break the problem into parts, Truck/Heavy Vehicle forms a significant chunk,and must be addressed.

So how does #truckspotting initiaitve helps ?

Well as citizens it is an effort to collect as much  documentary evidence we can about truckers entering city during peak hours (remember morning 7 to 11 and evening 6 to 10), collate this information (with details like truck no, Time of day and location within city - remember we dont want to create false cases) with pictures (could be from your mobile phones) and upload on twitter with a hashtag #truckspotting.

Alternatively you could email pictures on truckspotting@gmail.com

Brand relevance - functional or imagery led.

Came across a google doodle today, as each one of us would have come across these doodles at multiple time.

What suprises me is that the google logo is quite amorphous, changing often and has not fixed form. I dont imagine Google to be in a specific font, form, colour, background or context. Dont even know if they would have invested in creating a brand manual.

What comes to my mind when I think google is its functionality, its benefits, its utility. Dont really care what it looks like. So a functional elements of the brand score over the aesthetics/brand look & feel.

Does it point to an emerging trend amongst consumers. Do we want brands to be functionally relevant, and dont want them to spend money to create brand image, so that you and me will pay for it subsequently.

Is that a trend, or is it only relevant to digital space.

Good through to start the day ?

Balanced view about a visionary

This article in Mint by Sandipan Deb quite amazed me. It is a beautiful piece, which presents a balanced view about Steve jobs.

I use a lot of apple products and am impressed with the customer centricity steve had in designing his products, however I feel that we often get swayed way too much by the aura of a brand and not look beyond it.

I like the attempt of Mr.Deb in sharing few shades of grey from aura called Mr. Apple. I am sharing the article as is and thank Mr. Deb once again for sharing these viws


Not a Very nice man to know

Picasso only as the greatest painter of all time, and disregard the fact that he used, abused and discarded countless women throughout his life for work and pleasure?
Steve Jobs, by any standard, was a magnificently creative mind: visionary, iconoclast, transformer, creator of a massive global subculture of cool. No business- man's death has possibly ever seen such a worldwide spontaneous outpouring of grief and eulogy.

But was Jobs a “good man“?

Well, everyone now knows from his 2005 Stanford speech that he was an adopted child: his biologi- cal mother gave him away soon af- ter his birth. It is less well known that in 1977, when his live-in girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan became pregnant, Jobs denied paternity, and demanded she abort the baby. When she refused, he threw her out. When the child Lisa Nicole was born and a DNA analysis proved that he was the father, Jobs still refused to pay child support, even though mother and child were living on welfare. It took a court order to make him cough up the cash.

Jobs' attitude towards relation- ships with friends and colleagues was often bizarre, unpredictable and selfish. But the story of Alvy Ray Smith takes the cake.

After being ousted from Apple in 1985, Jobs bought Pixar, a computer animation company co-founded by Smith. What Smith and his team created transformed computer animation and made Jobs his first billion dollars. But after years of working together, Jobs went insanely ballistic on Smith during a meeting for writing on a whiteboard. In any meeting, Jobs had the “ownership“ of the whiteboard, and no one could violate that rule. Smith, feeling utterly humiliated, quit, leaving behind all that he had built. Jobs had Smith's name expunged from Pixar's official history. Smith ceased to exist.

In 1996, Gil Amelio was appoint- ed CEO of a beleaguered Apple and was given three years to turn it around. He appointed Jobs as a special adviser. Immediately, Jobs managed to get a highly damaging story on Amelio done in a leading business magazine, which also said that it was time Jobs was put in charge. Jobs then organized a boardroom coup and ousted Amelio. In effect, the Apple board reneged on its three-year promise to Amelio, paying no attention to the fact that he had taken over a company with hardly any money in the bank and had built up a $3 billion cash pile in just one-and-a-half years. This money bought Jobs enough time to figure out his strategy for Apple. Jobs, naturally, made sure that the world believed he was taking charge of a pauperized firm.

Of course, what followed is history: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad.
But behind its “think different“ cool, Apple was using brutal business tactics. It bought the rights to SoundJam, an MP3 software created by a firm called C&G, then stole all the company's best developers, and effectively made sure C&G shut down. And the iPod was born (but then, Jobs, in a 1994 interview, had said that talent imitates, genius steals).

All Apple products became increasingly exclusionary: nothing it produced would operate on any other platform. In fact, in 2008, Apple sent a cease-and-desist letter to BluWiki, a non-commer- cial wiki provider, alleging that a discussion of how to get other hardware and software to interop- erate with iPod infringed Apple's copyrights. BluWiki sued Apple, which had to back off and retract. After Jobs' death, legendary software freedom activist Richard Stallman described him as the “pioneer of the computer as jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom“.

In 2006, it came to light that Apple, while granting stock options to several employees, including Jobs, had been backdating them to correspond with lows in the stock price, so the grantees could make higher profits when cashing out.
Stockholders sued, and it was proved that Jobs had been aware of this. He and 12 others agreed to pay $14 million to settle.

Nearly all of Apple's manufac- turing is outsourced to China and there have been consistent allega- tions of inhuman working condi- tions--which have apparently even led to suicides--and total disregard for environmental safety.
Last month, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based advocacy group, told The Wall Street Journal that it found Apple “stubbornly evasive“ and said its refusal to discuss sup- pliers (Chinese factories manufac- turing for Apple) “can only be seen as a deliberate refusal of responsi- bility“ for environmental issues.

Also, of course, as we all know now, Jobs did not seem to have do- nated a cent to charity. But it was, after all, his money and entirely up to him what he did with it. What is more interesting is that he would very often not bother to drive around Apple's parking lot and would park his Mercedes in spaces reserved for the handicapped, sometimes parking badly enough to take up two spaces. Staffers stuck “park different“ cards on his windshield. Not that it improved Jobs' parking habits.

Yes, Jobs was not a very good person. But then, maybe one should only look at what a genius created rather than what he was.

Mumbai traffic - possible solution

Mumbai traffic solution.

Invariably all of us curse Mumbai for it's deteriorating traffic conditions. It does merit the treatment. Most of us curse politicians, auto rickshaws, best buses, roads and police in that order.

I too do the same. So much so for being a arm chair critic.

But what can I do besides that ?

Let me examine alternatives in front of me, which can potentially help ease out density of cars on road.

Option A) take a train. Ease of getting in and getting out of the train is a big deterrent and can be s potential bone breaker. Not to forget I am not getting younger, and the pain of getting a mode of transport from home to station and  office is a big stumbling block. Ruled out.

Option B) pool a car with colleagues. Don't know of colleagues who stay near, and friends who share the same work load/schedule. Not to mention the problems of. Not being able to discuss everything on phone when someone  known is am round. Ruled out.

Option C) buy a 2 wheeler. Exciting thought. A good reason to go in for that dream machine. Could be a Harley, or a home grown enfield. How about a scooty, works well with wife as well.  But thought of risking the monsters on road, and the daily commute, it's a scary thought. Ruled out.

Option D) hire a drive. At least I am saved the trouble of driving, and can focus on work, chat, even it takes care of drunken driving. Good thought. But am I in any manner contributing towards reducing traffic density. Not really. Contrary adding to costs and tantrums of driver. Ruled out.

Do I have any more choice?

I think I do. 

Just think of every corporate professional uses public infrastructure called taxis. My argument for usage of taxis is as below.

A) you don't get your vehicle on the road, thereby doing your bit of reducing traffic density.
B) you don't stress yourself by acting as a part time driver for at least 1 hour a day and braving those beasts on road, and giving your calf muscles a torture.
C) you avoid heartburn when some auto, taxi or SUV brushes past your priced vehicle and adds on to your things to do list on a weekend.
D) you can talk at length on phone, without being worried about cops.
E) you don't encourage creation of parallel economy of drivers who drive private cars v/s taxi drivers.
F) you can peacefully work on your tab or mobile device.
G) lastly you support livelihood of people have chosen to opt for taxi driving profession and not compete with them (though un knowingly) in the driving profession.

This may sound stupid or foolish soliton, but look around some developed countries like UK, Europe etc, where they levy congestion tax for private vehicles plying on the road. Your government can only create so much roads and bridges, they cannot overnight grow the infrastructure to keep pace with automotive (read private vehicles) growth rate. It's not practical.

I believe that depending upon budgetary considerations, each individual should encourage and use public transport and avoid creating a rat race of cars on road. Owing a car should not always equal to driving it to work,

Try it.