| Core thoughts, Mission and Plan of the Movement |
a) Deeper reasons of the
traffic problem: It was realized that though everybody can
immediately realize the apparent reasons for the traffic problem,
such as the disproportionate growth of people/vehicles and
infrastructure, inefficient public transport system etc, other deeper
reason of why we are not making any progress is that we are trapped
in a blame passing vicious circle, since all authorities such as
Police, Corporation, RTO and the Citizens just blame each other, in spite
of grossly lacking in carrying out their own functions
and responsibilities.
b) Peculiar behavior of
citizens: It was seen that although more than 90% of the citizens
are basically conscientious and responsible, the percentage of people
breaking the traffic rules is very high. There may be very few core
irresponsible ones, who think it is their birthright to break rules. But
more and more of others are breaking rules and have started
rationalizing the action. New generation watching all this is likely to
grow up being irresponsible to the core.
c) Non-effectiveness of
current methods: Although there have been efforts going in for
improvements, such as road-widening, better signals, more traffic
control measures such as No tolerance zone and so on, they are not
really generating any net resultant progress.
a) We need to have a long
term Vision and a comprehensive plan for city and the missions for
individual elements (Police, Corporation, Citizens) which are
synchronized with the common Vision. For a comprehensive thoughts
regarding what needs be done for transforming the traffic conditions,
please click here.
b) We need to break the
blame passing vicious circle and work as a team. Although there
are lots of specific actions that need to be taken, to solve specific
problems, what we believe is that all such specific actions can become
effective only if they are in tune with a vision and a long term plan
and any of this is only possible after we can break this blame passing
vicious circle.
Mission of Save Pune Traffic Movement is:
Complete transformation of Pune's Traffic.
As stated in the earlier core thought ("What needs to be done to make real progress"), our conviction is that we can achieve the mission of complete transformation of traffic, only after we break the vicious circle of blame passing between various governing authorities themselves and the citizens. Clearly this is what is our focus at present. How do we plan to achieve this? The Blame passing vicious circle is formed due to each element not looking at one's own fault and blaming the other. Naturally, it can be broken only when one element stops blaming others and focuses on correcting one's own shortcomings. This is precisely what we plan to do. Since we represent the Citizens, our focus is on citizens. The main duty of citizens towards traffic is to be a responsible citizen and observe all traffic rules. We plan to motivate conscientious citizens to break away from this trap and take up the commitment of 100% responsible behavior and express the commitment openly. Moreover, each person joining the Movement should share it with the other citizens in contact and spread this spirit of positive commitment in the society. When we get more and more strength, we will be able to put increasing pressure on authorities to support the Movement by removing their own shortcomings and thus we can move ahead with as a team for achieving the Mission of transformation of Pune traffic. In order to achieve this faster, we have several projects to spread the Movement at the Group level. For details of these programs, click here. However, essentially, various fronts on which we spread the Movement through these programs, are: a) To motivate individual citizens through various channels such as person to person contact, petrol pump drives, web site, news paper articles & reports, presentations in housing complexes and so on..
b) To motivate organizations of various types to spread it to their
members, employees
c) To motivate social organizations such as Rotaries, Lions, and of
any type
d) To motivate schools and colleges to motivate the students
e) To persuade eminent citizens to join and spread the Movement in
their circles
f) To persuade doctors to join and spread it in their circles and to
their fellow doctors
and so on..
If you are interested in joining the SPTM action team, you can participate in one or more of these projects.
Many other social organizations or NGOs
adopted the model of either helping the Police to control the traffic
or catch rule breakers, or following up with them to get something
done.
Nagrik Chetna Manch got the One week
"No Tolerance Zone" implemented. Nirdhar and NSS etc also
teamed up with Police for this.
Nirdhar in particular has worked on the
model of appointing traffic wardens and teaming up with Police from
time to time at some traffic joint or the other to control traffic. It
definitely does help "at that time" and "at that
location".
However, in our analysis this model is not
a long term solution. There hasn't been any improvement in general due
to this over the years.
Our model is radically different.
While all these conventional approaches focus on catching the rule
breakers, we are focusing on motivating the conscientious citizens to
follow rules for a purpose, whether Police is there or not.
First is a bandage approach, while our approach is to achieve complete
cure.
However, we don't say
that Police action i.e. penalizing the rule breakers, is not needed or
will not be needed. We know that we will not reach Utopia any time and
there will always be people who can only understand the language of
the whip of law. It is only that the current enforcement method is not
going to solve the problem.
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