Category Archives: Civic gyaan

Zzzzzzzz. This is all I do when it rains. And You?

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Heylo ChangeMakers!

Am sure you saw our video Rains, Love, Chai, Pakodas …And?, which was launched last week. No, you haven’t? Click here to watch it.

Dunno about you of course but I could so relate to the paper boats and the frogs bit in the rains. As kids, we used to go crazy with these thingies when it rained. Some solid timepass!

But, know what..what I didn’t see/hear people referring to in the video and what I totally do in rains nowadays is this one thing:

Sleep my ass off till it hurts. :)

Comment below if you agree with this.

sleep

Neways..

Wo kya bolte hain..Watch the first drop of rain fall, feel the breeze, stop by, notice the smiles, smell the roses. Sorry, ye thoda zyada ho gya cuz all of us know what it smells like when we walk on the roads in rains. 😐

The video rekindled many fond memories but know, what the sad bit is, it’s just not the same anymore. The rains just doesn’t bring that cheer it used in the earlier days. The mess , the bad roads & the traffic just screw up the whole ‘rain’ experience, which by the way, you can report on www.ChangeBhai.in.

Check User Issues# A0481 “Pathetic roads” & A0516 “Drainage” & do report similar rain related problems in your area. And, if you have no issue to upload then do share the post to spread the word.

Issue#481, "Pathetic Roads"
Issue#481, “Pathetic Roads”
Issue#516 "drainage"
Issue#516 “drainage”

Indian Traffic Sense = Non Sense. Proved.

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parking1           parking2

Can you think of anyone, like any-freaking-sane-person to whom these parking spaces (pics above) will appeal? No?! Lemme tell you. To these guys here. Grrrr.

ChangeBhai Issue#A0417,#A0485
ChangeBhai Issue#A0417,#A0485

They will love it. #SlurpSlurp #WhaddaChallenge

The civic sense of us Indians is legendary and traffic sense is not to be left behind either. These terms mentioned below, for example, are clearly alien/french/greek to most Indians.

Right of way. Kyun jaane doon main kisi ko. #MardangiPeKalank.

Excessive honking. Hamara horn. Hamaari marji.

Lane Discipline. Kaun banaya ye @#$%&@#* rule.

Speed Restriction. Nayi gaadi li hai bhai ne.

And the worst of all.

Parking Discipline. Chup be! Time nahi hai faltu.

By the way, the image above was uploaded by a Mumbai user, refer ChangeBhai issue#A0417 “Double parking caravans on main rd”. The issue was resolved by the Changebhai team with a lot of help from Mumbai Traffic Police. Do not forget to check out the lengthy resolution comments below the issue description.

The buggers were shooed away from one spot and they changed their location to another spot closeby. Check ChangeBhai issue#A0485 “Double bus parking still happening”. Thanks to the Mumbai traffic police Constable Wakde for helping us resolve this menace. Work in progress. Phew.

So, if any of you see similar traffic offenses on your way to work or in your neighborhood, you know what to do. No, you don’t?!?

All you need to do is take a picture, log on to www.ChangeBhai.in and report the issue. Supra eazy!

Ok. So, I still have some word limit left for this blog. Joke time. Old joke this one:

Santa parked his truck in ‘No Parking’.

When he returned he saw a note on his truck. “Parking Fine”

Santa writes “Thanks for the compliment”.

How to Give Ganpati Bappa the Best Welcome This Year?

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Ganpati Bappa Morya, Pudchya Varshi Laukar Yaa!

(Translation: Glory to the Lord Ganpati! Come again soon next year)

We invite Lord Ganpati to come back to visit us year after year, but shouldn’t we ensure his trip is comfortable and worth it. :)

By the way, the Ganpati Mandals in Mumbai mean serious business this time and to ensure our beloved ‘Bappa’ has a smooth ride on the Visarjan day (September 18), they have given a list of 2113 potholes and a deadline of September 16 to their municipal corporation to fix them. They say if they fail to do so, then all the mandals will use their reserve funds and carry out pothole-repair work. Wah! What spirit!

Image Courtesy: Rediff
Image Courtesy: Rediff

This was about a case of ‘good spirit’. A case study from ChangeBhai’s issue database about ‘not-so-good intent’ below:

Check out these issues uploaded by two ChangeBhai users:

Issue# A0429 ‘Huge Pothole outside SaiPalaceHotel’

Before
Before
After
After

Issue# A0418 ‘new potholes on recently made road’

Before

Before

 We are awaiting post resolution image of issue# A0418 from the user

In both the cases, the roads were newly made and had developed potholes shortly after they were repaired. Of course, we got the potholes repaired but the question is ‘How long will they last?’ Having worked with them closely, we can see that BMC is trying to do what they can at the moment, but the backlog of repairs and resource constraint are two issues which make the problem bigger and bigger with each passing day. Koi Sujhaav?

And ya, tab tak,koshish jaari rakhte hain . Do upload similar issues on www.ChangeBhai.in to ensure Bappa’s trip is totally worth it, this time. :) Ganpati Bappa Morya!!

Garbage, Crows, Murder and Mumbai.

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Do you know what a ‘Group Of Crows’ is called?

A MURDER.

😐 No joke this, Boss. Google Kar lo. “English is a very phunny language”, as Amitabh Bachchan said in some movie. Namak Halal, me thinks.

Do you know where you can see maximum ‘Murders in Daylight’?

MUMBAI.

No. Am not referring to the underworld problems that this city faced in the not-so-distant past. Am referring to the ‘Crows partying on messy garbage bins’ issue which all Mumbaikars are so incredibly exposed to, that they have absolutely no problem ‘Living With It’.

But, not this user. Check  issue# A0450, Garbage with crows feeding. Do check the comment section to know the entire story. For those, who are in a hurry, here is the picture of the issue.

ChangeBhai Issue# A0450, Garbage with crows feeding

ChangeBhai Issue# A0450, Garbage with crows feeding

The user would witness this gross scene everyday on his way to work. After he reported it to ChangeBhai, we immediately flung into action. MCGM shared their side of the story, which was (yawn if you want):

‘We pick up garbage between 9 am-10 am but the nearby slum dwellers and restaurants throw garbage late in the night, which can be seen by office goers (including the user) before 9 am. Hum kya karein, aap batao??’

This issue# A0450 was strikingly similar to a lot of other garbage issues that we receive on a day to day basis. Check this one for example, issue#A0412, Garbage strews outside bins.

In all these cases, MCGM authority after expressing their helplessness asked us for suggestion on what to do about it. They also add that enforcing a fine does not work with the slum dwellers for obvious reasons.

After long discussions, here is what we suggested and got implemented:

Issue#A0412: MCGM placed a guard on their payroll near the bin to warn the slum people and ask them to throw the garbage in the bin and not outside it.

Issue#A0450: MCGM is placing 3 additional bins of 0.5 tonne capacity each in this densely populated area as it required minimum 2 tonne capacity bins to accommodate the garbage here.

What would you suggest we should have done in such cases?

A. Let the crows party #4BajGayeLekinPartyAbhiBaakiHai

B. Enforce penalties #JebDheeli

C. Do what we did #LageRaho

Do upload issues of your aas-padoss on www.ChangeBhai.in if you want to ‘pull the plug’ on such murders.

Note: As we always say,  most civic authorities including MCGM are willing to resolve our issues if we work ‘with them’ instead of ‘against them’.  Try it, we say, if you disagree.

They are doing their ‘Bin’ …Are you doing yours!

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We have mentioned in our earlier posts how our entire team takes out a couple of days in a month and moves around their city speaking to people on the roads. Psst…The footage will make for some ‘enlightening’ YouTube videos (which we are in the process of making, by the way. Watch this space for that.)

The theme of this piece is inspired from the conversations we have had with people about the issue of ‘Garbage Bins’ in Mumbai; South Mumbai to be precise.

While most of the people said that there are no garbage bins in their city at all, some said they are not enough while a few said there are a lot of bins, newly installed albeit.

After getting varying response from the people of the same city, we decided to chuck everything else and check it ourselves. So, we went about town doing guess what… ‘BIN SPOTTING’ (Besides the point, but when my mother called me to ask where I was and I told her what exactly we were doing, I could hear a disappointing sigh from the other end with a faint ‘Is this why you did Engineering and an MBA’ followed by a click..Hota hai!)

We could see a lot of freshly installed bins which were nowhere close to the tattered bins we are used to seeing.

Cool stuff, municipal people! You did surprise us with these fancy, separate Dry and Wet bins (btw, our counterparts in other smaller cities could spot them as well…they are all over the place…like Hollywood would say… “Run..the bins are taking over” #BadJoke) Would be great if the authorities can run recurring campaigns to raise awareness on what type of kachra to throw in which coloured bin. And the colour coding, we suggest, should be universal across the country.

Trash bins in Mumbai
Newly installed trash bins in South Mumbai.

 So we come to today’s question:

They are doing their ‘Bin’ ..oops bit … but, are you doing yours!

Some key points to remember when you want to throw garbage :

1. Bins are not capable of walking up to you
(we are hopeful that with growing technological advancements such a day would come as well :) #IndiansNeedWalkingBins)

 2. Just like we hunt for the nearest ATMs, STD-PCOs whenever we need one, we can do the same for bins as well. Always, always remember:

The next bin is not too far away

3. And if you think there are not enough bins –

Why not report it at www.ChangeBhai.in!

We will get them installed for you, if there are none close by. What say you? Yes, no, maybe?