All posts by CB Team

Election Results Are Out.

May 11, 2014GeneralChangeBhai, election results, elections in india, india elections, kejriwal, modi, rahulCB Team

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Once upon a time, there was a jungle named ‘La La Land (LLL)’. The story is from one of those times when nothing was going right in the jungle. Humans were entering LLL at their own whims and fancies. There was a lot of internal rift going on. Jungle infrastructure was going from bad to worse.

The LLLians decided that it was time to select the King of the jungle in the hope that he will resolve all their issues. Elections were held. Monkeys spread awareness about the need to vote for their prospective King. The chief candidates in the fray were: The Lion, Tiger, Elephant and a Deer. More than 70% of LLLians participated in the selection process which was declared a huge success.

Election results were declared. The Lion won. Oh sorry..The Tiger won…Hang on..The Elephant won. No..no..The Deer won. I apologise for my poor memory that I don’t remember clearly but yes, the deer won.. probably..I guess. There was a huge celebration. The Monkeys partied like nobody’s business. Meanwhile, LLLians went back to their usual routine. One year passed. Nothing really changed.

Nothing really changed.

Nothing really changed because the problems of the jungle had become too big to be resolved by the King alone. Things would have changed if all the LLLians did their small bit in helping the King solve the jungle’s problems. Only then La La Land would have been a better place to live. Right now, it did not really matter whether it was the lion, the tiger, the elephant or the deer who won.

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As much as we want it to be true, the fact is that neither Modi nor Rahul nor Kejriwal can wave a magic wand and bring about a significant change in the near future if we do not play our part in it. They will bring a change but nothing close to what we have been expecting.

Don’t just wait for the election results. Visit www.ChangeBhai.in and ‘play your part’.

ChangeBhai | SPOT-REPORT-CHANGE
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Time Travel, Anyone?

May 5, 2014Generalbad roads, ChangeBhai, civic, crawford market, economic growth in india, India, infrastructure, roads, social issuesCB Team

Ladies and Gentlemen. Boys and Girls. This is what we call ‘going BACK in time’. Literally. Just look at this picture and tell me if I am wrong.

Call this a sad case of irony or whatever, but the truth is, that despite the fantastic economic growth, India is doing really bad in urban governance. For more than a decade, India has enjoyed unprecedented growth that in many ways is comparable to that of The United States of America years ago. However, the same cannot be said of our infrastructure.

Come on India, we know you can do better. Report some of these issues to the authorities through ChangeBhai and help India move forward.

Real or Not!

April 30, 2014GeneralCB Team

Guys, we have decided that we have had enough of serious blogs for now. Amidst all the hard work and toil happening at ChangeBhai, we believe we should keep a check on our sense of humour as well. So, here we go.

Check out our first series of Believe it or I-dont-care-if-you-dont facts around one of the most popular issues handled by ChangeBhai i.e Potholes.

1. Pothole Speed Breakers:

Apparently, these fake pothole stickers are used in Canada to deter people from speeding. No prizes for guessing why we don’t need these back in India. Hah!

2. Pothole Utility

3. Pothole Art

Street art activism in Yekaterinburg, Russia

4. Chilling Out Zones

@Authorities in India: Don’t be surprised if we start using these techniques to embarrass you. Not joking.

Blame the elections. What?!

April 8, 2014GeneralCB Team

“Greatest show on earth begins today” screams the headline in today’s TOI. All of you would agree with the fact that the buzz around the impending elections in our country this time is utterly deafening. As citizens of the largest democracy on earth, we mostly associate election time with something exciting, something to look forward to. A welcome change of guard. A new beginning.

But, alas, under this whole media blitzkrieg, we could have never imagined the fact that the government machinery literally comes to a standstill around the election time. Let me back my point with a live example from ChangeBhai’s database. Look at this Issue#A0269, “Road dug but not filled properly” uploaded by a Mumbai user and do read the comments uploaded by our back end team to get the context.

Click here to go to Issue#A0269, “Road dug but not filled properly”

It appears that, out of the 5 road engineers handling this area, 4 have been placed on election duty. The ‘helpless’ Head of the road department of this area has been requesting us to understand his situation. He, by the way, is on election duty himself from morning till 3 in the afternoon and they are supposed to keep their mobile phones off during this time.

It is insane how the Municipal Corporation employees could be stalled from discharging their regular functions in the name of elections. They are not in a position to carry out even the most basic function like the emergency maintenance work. We suggest that the over enthusiastic Legal luminaries as well as the Election Commission should find a solution to the problem of our government machinery being rendered almost dysfunctional at this time.

It would not be wrong to conclude that MCGM (Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) is in an absolute state of limbo at the moment. Sad but true. Having said that, we, at ChangeBhai are not going to get bogged down with this and have doubled our follow up frequency owing to the elections. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Where there’s a will…there’s a ‘ROAD’ !

March 11, 2014UpdatesChangeBhai, civic, DDA, delhi, roadsCB Team

Q: When is the right time to do the right thing?
A: Who can say, but it’s usually most wise to start today.”

Here’s an interesting case study from ChangeBhai’s stable which saw a very active citizen upload a long pending issue of her neighbourhood, minutes after we launched the ChangeBhai portal officially. She thought it was most wise to start immediately. Here’s the story:

It so happened that minutes after we launched ChangeBhai, one of our early users uploaded this particular issue (Issue No. A0003) titled ‘Bad Road in Rohini’. The issue was put into process by the ChangeBhai team within a few days. It seemed that this road in question was a major source of grief for the residents of this area. Even the most active ones had given up when it came to taking it up with the authorities. It has been like this since the last 3 years now. You can say that that delay had indeed turned out to be the worst form of denial here.

A short note on why getting this road fixed was critical:

This road connects around 30 housing societies of Sector 9, Rohini to a busy commercial area housing, amongst other things, three shopping malls: City Centre, Metro walk & Shopper’s Stop. The condition of the road was beyond pathetic and yet, the citizens were widely using it, as it was the quickest way to reach the commercial area.

While most of the other issues we were receiving were getting resolved with minor delays (if any), this one stuck out like a sore thumb! After a lot of follow-ups (read escalations, verbal threats, giving up, getting-a-grip-again, sticking-daily-motivational-quotes-post-its etc.), we managed to get the authorities to approve the construction of this road early this year! A lot of follow ups later, the work finally started in February. Uff.

One of our newly hired management trainees has depicted the history of this case graphically as below:

Have a look at the images below and we are sure, you will be motivated to report a similar long pending issue of your area:

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

March 6, 2014GeneralCB Team

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”

We, at ChangeBhai strongly and emphatically recommend that this particular Law ‘Prevention of cruelty to animals act. 1960’ be added to the list of ‘The Most Ridiculous And Outdated Animal Laws in the world’. It is so incredibly vague in today’s context that we had to literally pinch ourselves when somebody sent it to us and told us politely why Issue# A0260 on ChangeBhai pertaining to ‘Cruelty to Caged Birds’ cannot be resolved.

Actual image uploaded by the user : Issue# A0260. Check the bottom-most cage btw.

We were in touch with a senior Animal Welfare Officer to get this issue resolved. Fantastic guy, but of course, as helpless as the user who reported the issue. He patiently explained to us that the law which pertains to this issue is so archaic and outdated that the police as well as the courts refuse to entertain such issues. There have been a lot of unsuccessful attempts, he told us.

Getting back to the ‘so called facts’. Apparently, Chaper III, Point 11(e) of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. 1960 says:

“Treating animals cruelly

: keeps or confines any animal in any cage or other receptacle which does not measure sufficiently in height, length and breadth to permit the animal a reasonable opportunity for movement;”

Now, the problem is the word ‘SUFFICIENTLY’. The animal abusers get away with it by arguing that the enclosure in which they have put the animal/bird is ‘sufficient’. In our case, the pet shop owner can very conveniently say that he thinks putting 15 birds in a 2 feet * 1 feet enclosure is more than sufficient. Clearly, nobody bothered to define the word ‘Sufficient’ way back in 1960. I don’t really blame the guys completely as at that time there were no organized ‘Pet Shops’ selling birds in cages.

The Animal Welfare Officer also informed us that ex-minister Jairam Ramesh tried to do something about it and he conceptualised something known as The Animal Welfare Act,2011 and the Pet Shop Rules,2010. These legislations intended to replace the existing Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960, were to provide for enhanced penalties and clearer definitions of animal abuse.

No prizes for guessing but no, nothing happened after that. And here we are, determined to get this issue closed. We urge all of you to help us spread the word and share it with people you know.

Psst…Next time when you see birds in a small cage please bug the store owner so that he knows that we, the Urban Indians are NOT OK with it.

‘Bus Advertisement’ Campaign Launch In Maharashtra!

February 26, 2014GeneralCB Team

We, at ChangeBhai understand the importance of reaching the citizens when they are ‘On The Go’.

Kudos to our partner Adcraft Outdoor Media in helping us create awareness about ChangeBhai through outdoor advertising! We can’t thank you enough for your support in launching the bus campaign in Maharashtra.

Psst…Do share pictures of these buses with ChangeBhai messages if you happen to spot them on the road or at signals. Email them to us at now_or_abhi@changebhai.in and win interesting ChangeBhai merchandise!

Oh! Skit!

January 30, 2014GeneralCB Team

They say, Enthusiasm, like measles, mumps and the common cold, is highly contagious. We got to experience this first-hand during one of our ground engagement sessions at ISB&M College, Pune. As part of our Social Impact workshop, we gave the participants 10 minutes time to prepare a skit on the topic ‘What would they do if they were given the power to bring about a change for a day?’. They were required to keep the issues handled by ChangeBhai as the underlying theme of their skits.

Without wasting a minute, the students formed huddles to discuss their skits. And boy!, what an output!! Each group presented a unique concept. The execution was fantastic. The performances were stellar. Some of them performed so well that we forgot for a moment that we were in a management institute. These youngsters conceptualized and executed their skits professionally. They addressed a variety of issues ranging from child labour to garbage dumps to animal cruelty.

Skit on 'Animal Cruelty' — Skit on ‘Animal Cruelty’

Skit on "Child Labour' — Skit on “Child Labour’

Thank you ISB&M for inviting us to your campus. We need more active institutions like yours to spread the word!

Bloggers take notice of ChangeBhai!

January 22, 2014GeneralCB Team

Bhautik Joshi of www.kreativegeek.com notes,

“…a site which caught my attention this week is ChangeBhai, this portal allows you to report civic issues along with pictures, was surprised to see some issues reported from Pune already fixed. If such help is available for citizens on internet we should make use of it for overall betterment of our community. Lot of arm chair activists give up when it comes to taking a civic problem heads on and what remains is a diarrhoea of tweets and posts on social media.

Hats off to people who have created this portal and taking issues that concern the common man to the right authorities which may go unnoticed due to social apathy and lack of awareness on methods to deal with such problems….”

Refer to the link below for the complete article.

http://www.kreativegeek.com/2013/12/social-itinerary-and-civic-issue.html

Thank you! It is heartening to know that ChangeBhai is being widely recommended by the active blogging community. We look forward to more support from active bloggers like you.

Baccha Party Zindabad!

December 20, 2013GeneralChangeBhai, child labour, civic, garbage, schools, social issuesCB Team

Team ChangeBhai embarked on a nation wide ‘Ground Engagement Campaign’ for schools and colleges last month. We are covering hundreds of such institutions, small, big, government, private and so on. Have a look at the pictures below from one such campaign.

These are students of Laxmibai Nandgude International School, Pimpri Chinchwad.

We were to take a session on ‘How to use ChangeBhai to report issues” in this school. A peep into the window of the makeshift tin room where the students were seated and my colleague whispered to me “Dude, I bet none of these kids would have access to internet. We need to drop the original plan of educating the kids about ChangeBhai..let’s not throw that whole ‘tagging the issue on a map’ gyan here..no point..why to bug the poor kids…nahi samjhega inko”

I agreed. “Ya..ya..of course..lets chuck it..Plan B is cool here..let’s just speak about some popular social issues…garbage..potholes..and leave”

There were around 60-70 kids from 8^th, 9^th & 10^th standards, girls seated on one side and boys on the other. Around 10-15 teachers were sitting on either side of the small jam-packed room.

I began the session with the general gyan on social issues that we face on day to day basis. As I was about to introduce the portal to the students, I thought of asking the students some questions to gauge their ‘internet awareness level’ so that I can tweak my pitch accordingly.

“So, how many of you use internet regularly?” , I ask, expecting 4-5 kids to raise their hands.

Barring 2-3 girls, all of them raise their hands. Yes. All!

“Ahem..mmm..ok. ..g..gr..great..Ok..so how many of you are on facebook?”

70% hands went up again.

“What about mobile?..How many of you have it?”

50% hands up again.

“Do you use any apps on your phone?”

“Whatsapp”

“Angry Birds”

My colleague looks at me. We know what to do next. We go back to Plan A which was a ‘Spot The Issue’ activity. The activity was super successful. 11 students tied up for the 1^st place!! A 1 min on-the-spot extempore competition was conducted to pick two winners.

The students were to speak about the issues featured on ChangeBhai which were close to their hearts.

Reik Khan, 14 said “I want to do something about Child Labour in India. No parent should send their kids to work when it is time for them to study..So, Yes.. I want to use Changebhai to report all such child labour issues that I see on a daily basis in my city”

Pratik Sonawane, 15, Reik’s senior in school, said “We, the citizens are as much to blame for bad civic situation in our country as are the authorities. Educating the citizens to report the issues around them is the need of the hour”

The more we interact with young guns like you, the more we feel confident about the success that awaits ChangeBhai!

Q: When is the right time to do the right thing? A: Who can say, but it’s usually most wise to start today.”

Q: When is the right time to do the right thing?
A: Who can say, but it’s usually most wise to start today.”