Acche Din Aa Sakte Hain. Ask How?

My eyeballs literally almost popped out when I came across this website offering ‘Slum tourism’ to westerners. This explains the recent phenomena of a hell lot of western celebrities making a beeline to explore, out of all the places, Indian slums. The website claimed that this ‘concept’ is picking up really well among westerners who want to explore the ‘Real India’. Oh God, kill me please! Somebody tell them, there is no Real India. There is just Dual India.

Btw, this is completely besides the point, but I secretly blame Slumdog <beep> millionaire for this day. :-) A lot of critics and people on IMDB described this godforsaken movie as the, wait for it..Feel good movie of the Decade. I mean, seriously? The one perception which takes the cake is ‘Indians are poor but happy people’. Really! What are you? A sadist?

Let me not digress any further and make a serious point. Look at the picture below of Hooverville, Seattle and the world’s favourite slums (blah!), Dharavi, Mumbai:

Blog-acche din

For people who came in late, this is America during the 1930-40’s Great Depression. After President Roosevelt launched a series of programs aptly named ‘New Deal’ and the feeling of ‘regime certainty’ came back, America gradually came out of its problems. See, I just summed it up very conveniently in 2-3 lines, but of course it took years of monumental efforts from the government as well as the people to come of it. Google it later to know how, when, why, what etc. I have exceeded the word limit given to me already. 😐

Blame my eternal optimism, but from a layman’s point of view, what I really want to take away from these two pictures is: Things can become OK. Stealing/twisting Modi’s favourite quote. Acche din aa sakte hain.It will clearly take us years to get things right in our country and then another couple of years to get the perception of ‘India is a dirty shithole’ out of the world’s mind.

So why don’t we start today and report issues on www.ChangeBhai.in and contribute in our own small way to make India a better place to live. Unless, of course, we are comfortable with being a prime ‘slum tourism’ destination for the world.

 

Things That Piss Us Off.

changebhai-blog

#Potholes #ChildLabour #Garbage

True That. Period.

Note: Even I am guilty of that and so, ‘No Comments’ at all this time. Just a moment of silence for all my fellow hypocrites and a high-five…

….In the face…

……with a chair.

😐

ChangeBhai | SPOT-REPORT-CHANGE
www.ChangeBhai.in
  | CB on FaceBook   |   CB on Twitter

 

Oh No! Elections Over. What Next!

Cartoon Courtesy: John Manders
Sketch Courtesy: John Manders

For those of you who can relate to the picture above, I say “Welcome To The Club!”. :-) According to assumed statistics, at least 50% of our countrymen and a staggering 90% of those on social media have officially joined this Club today.

Well, on a slightly serious note, if you are feeling ..ahem..mmm.. well.. for lack of a better word.. Empty at the moment and are in search of something remotely useful to do, then do visit www.ChangeBhai.in and upload an issue of your neighborhood at least.

And, oh yes…I was actually told to write this in this particular blog…so here it goes..

ChangeBhai congratulates Mr.Narendra Modi for winning the Elections 2014.

Abki Baar, Modi Sarkar. Ab toh hai bas Change ka Intezaar. (wasn’t told to write that..but hope it rhymed. Rhyming is the flavor of the season and don’t want to be left out 😐.)

Till then, have a nice weekend and if not, then blame the new government. (Ok. That was sarcasm again. Sorry.)

 

Election Results Are Out.

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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.

Ad design

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

ChangeBhai | SPOT-REPORT-CHANGE
www.ChangeBhai.in
  | CB on FaceBook   |   CB on Twitter

Time Travel, Anyone?

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.

comparison

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!

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:

fake potholes
Courtesy Pioneer Suspension

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

Courtesy: twentytwowords
Courtesy: twentytwowords
Courtesy: Telegraph,UK
Courtesy: Telegraph,UK

pothole parlour

3. Pothole Art

By Artist Juliana Santacruz Herrera
By Artist Juliana Santacruz Herrera
Street art activism in Yekaterinburg, Russia
Street art activism in Yekaterinburg, Russia

 

By Artist Steve Wheen
By Artist Steve Wheen

4. Chilling Out Zones

Courtesy Telegraph, UK
Courtesy Telegraph, UK

chillout-1

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

Blame the elections. What?!

“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.

elections
Photo Credit: EPA,SCMP

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’ !

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:

rohini sector 9

20130928_150356

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:

delhi issue timeline

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:

20140220_130447 delhi-4

 

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

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
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!

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.

bus-1bus-2

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!