NyayaBhoomi – A Service Design Venture for Auto-Rickshaws
by Shagun Singh
Ever had to catch one of those New Delhi auto-rickshaws? You know that you are being taken for a ride then. The rickshaw drivers are rude, they refuse to go by the meter, they always seem to be going the opposite direction to where you want to be going. I have questioned the local transportation [...]
FreMo: A BikeShare Initiative in India
by Shagun Singh
I visited Paris in the summer of 2007. After spending a couple of weeks of learning french and reading the lonely planet, I was prepared for a week or two of intense historical, cultural and architectural overdose. Everything was pretty much as imagined except the law that allows one to open a bottle of wine, [...]
Mapunity – Social technology at work
by Ria Rajan
Mapunity uses and develops technology to tackle social problems and development challenges in India. They provide map based services and design geographical information systems along with mobile technologies mostly for government departments and civil society organisations. They are also extend their services to R&D initiatives of commercial ventures. Of all the various project Mapunity is [...]
Bambike – A Bamboo Bicycle
by Ria Rajan
Bruce Sterling’s short story The Interoperation , featured in the Technology Review published by MIT, (Massachusett’s Institute of Technology) can be briefly summarized as a tale of a future where robots build and tear down buildings based on pre-set programs and a future where people ride bamboo bicycles. In present times, this story is not [...]
Jugaad – The spirit of indian innovation
by Shagun Singh
Flickr picture by lakshman_M. “Jugaad is a vehicle assembled by carpenters and low skilled people much like what the Flintstones did for their cars. The basic form of the vehicle is a cart fitted out with a diesel pump used as an engine. A big rod with a wheel at the end serves as the [...]
The SammaaN Foundation – The Rickshaws of today
by Shagun Singh
IRFAN ALAM, a 27-year-old from the Indian state of Bihar, remembers clearly when he first felt the thirst for entrepreneurship. Sitting in the back of a cycle-rickshaw on a parched summer’s day in his hometown of Begusarai, he asked his rickshaw-puller for a drink of water. He points out that India’s rickshaw-pullers earn only a [...]
Justice on wheels
by Shagun Singh
“We must take justice – fast justice – to people,” vowed Mr Singh. “When a verdict takes 10 or 20 years, it destroys their faith in the legal system.” According to the government, Indian courts are bedeviled with a staggering backlog of 15.6 million cases. It is not uncommon for minor cases to drag on [...]
Solar Rickshaws – The green wheels of India
by Shagun Singh
The process of launching the soleckshaws – as solar rickshaws are popularly called – has been set into motion by municipal corporation, the UT-appointed nodal agency for the project. The venture is part of a central scheme being carried out in various cities of the country to promote the eco-friendly rickshaws.On a complete charge the [...]
