Friday, September 21, 2007

The show goes on!

That's right. 14th September was the last day SumTotal volunteers were 'officially' regulating traffic at CT. But NO, that wasn't the last day of the initiative itself!
Inspired by the initiative taken, encouraged by the positive change seen, some of us employees of IT companies in the area have volunteered to continue this effort. And we plan to be at this for a 'few' more days at least!
So if you thought the orange 'jackealts' are gone, the left lane's going to be blocked, it's anarchy on the roads again...you're wrong! We'll still be there to free the left lane for you. To bring some sense in the madness. To help you reach work a little less frustrated!
And you can support us in this. By doing what you can - following rules.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Why?

Today was the last day for SumTotal's volunteers to regulate the traffic at the CT junction. We started this initiative about a month ago. Now, volunteers from companies like Oracle, CSC, JDA Software and SumTotal will be taking this initiative forward. We hope to come up with a solution for the problems faced by and because of the pedestrians.

I will find out if my company can lend its buses, after they're done dropping our employees to the office, to help drop the people who wait for shared autos near CT to CG, CP, Mindspace, etc.
I don't know if this is feasible, but there's no harm in trying. If this does come true, there could be a possible backlash from the auto drivers because this might hit their earnings/business.

People's attitude towards this:

First of all (and this is important) -

I'm not blaming you;I know you have it in you to make that change!! :)


Though the response has been good, it hasn't been great. So many people have seen us helping with the traffic, but we still find it difficult to find enough volunteers. Does it mean that the rest of you, people who work in Hyderabad and are reading this blog, people who go past CT and see us regulating the traffic, don't care about Hyderabad? Have you forwarded this link to everyone you know in Hyderabad? Have you spoken about this when you meet your friends?
You can see that the state of affairs in Hyderabad is slowly worsening and you know that after a few months, the roads here will mirror Bangalore's congested roads, yet you still break those rules and you still behave as if you're not at fault. Why?

You act as if you don't have time; those projects have deadlines, the bugs need to be fixed, the patch needs to be tested, etc. Tell me, are you going to wait until the project called Hyderabad becomes critical and only then take remedial measures? Does everything have to be learnt only from the post mortem meeting? :)

If I ask you to list the problems with Hyderabad, you'd have enough data to start another blog, but if I ask you to do something, anything, about it..... would you?

When I see folks shouting at us when we're only trying to help the city (and them), I feel I should give up. Who knows, maybe I will give up someday and if later at a party in Mumbai or any other city, somebody passes a comment about Hyderabad and it's bad traffic (and the Hyderabadis' attitude), I'll just keep quiet and move on... knowing that I tried giving the citizens of Hyderabad a chance, but they didn't take it.