Vijay Anand | The Startup Guy.

I’day Activity Update: Pothole Fixing

// Chennai, India, Politics

Following up on my previous post on the plan that a bunch of us came up with, in fixing the potholes on the roads of the city as part of the independence day activities. There was a request for updates on that and here it goes:

There has been a lot of interest from prominent individuals from within the city, the media and from everyone involved about this activity. I am not sure if I understand all of the curiosity bit, since its quite a simple concept of – see a problem, fix it – but i guess the ideology of taking matters into your own hands towards a positive end is something that people are really enjoying.

Well, to dismiss the suspense and curiosity, the initiative was phenomenally well received and it went quite well. We fixed about 60+ potholes, and we would like to do this on a sustained basis.

If there is someone else planning anything similar, here are a few summaries:

1. There was a lot of paranoia within the group that we probably might get arrested for doing this. Apparently, as per the law you can’t do this. But I also know from personal and close sources within the city corporation that they are facing an acute problem of not being able to find contract workers to fix up the roads. Put the both of them together and at the end of the day, they shouldnt mind – and they didnt.

2. I think we saw the most enthusiastic and encouraging sets of policemen who were patrolling the city, were curious as to what we were doing and gave us their support – so much for the paranoia and the dreams of some of the team members to spend the night of independence day behind bars

3. Limit the number of people to a size that you can control. You might want to grow organically with the team and with a team that you know quite well – just to ensure quality of the work. There were about 17 folks who turned up. Very positive turnout for three days of preparation and notice.

4. At the early hours of the night, you might want to be careful about the traffic.

If you are interested in doing something similar in your city, write to me and I’ll send you some details on the process as to how to fix a road – cleaning the hole, sprinkling water and the right mix of concrete to fill it and the time required before it sets.