Convenience eats manifestos for breakfast

People who ride their motorbikes on the footpath really piss off my wife. She takes her walks in the evening, which is also rush hour in Bangalore, and there are always those who try to beat traffic jams by riding on the footpath. For pedestrians who have to contend with loose wires, faeces, footloose rats, construction debris, collapsed tree limbs and broken flagstones, speeding bikes are one more hazard to dodge. When she told a harried police officer about this, he asked her to write on Twitter, and tag the traffic-police.

Yesterday I took photographs of the Zebra crossing outside my apartment complex because the traffic tends to stop far beyond the line. Pedestrians cannot cross. A lack of civic sense is half the problem. The other half is that the painted lines have faded out. To solve this, I have to write to the Commissioner of police, who will inform the BBMP, who will then undertake the task of painting those lines.

This morning, my friend told me how some BBMP workers were dumping garbage right outside his house. He thinks they are treating the space as a temporary collection point. To stop this from happening, he has to take pictures and submit a document to the BBMP.

I don’t think people are being assholes on purpose. It is just convenient to be one. You’d think we need an authoritarian Government to fix all this, but we already do, they’re just busy imposing their authority on other things. Things that will win them elections, and those things sometimes detract from civic sense. They do however write manifestos for change.

But then, convenience eats manifestos for breakfast.