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 system in the capital a bunch of times. The new metro system is a part of the solution but will not really replace the rickshaws as far as short distances are concerned. The government intervened in 1998 only to implement CNG or LPG for all auto-rickshaws and the bus fleet in the city. However, there were no service changes in order to improve any of these transportation systems. Recently, I came across a non governmental organization called NyayaBhoomi. The two main centers of focus for this organization are public transportation system and government accountability.

NyayaBhoomi has been developing a venture called the ‘Auto Star Club’ for sometime. The venture is focused on developing an auto rickshaw service that creates an ecosytem of profit generation, client services, long term growth options for the drivers, and technological innovation. NyayaBhoomi published a handbook for the auto drivers that tells them about their rights and duties. The book is aptly titled “Samaadhan” and was published in June 2007. They have also facilitated advertising on auto rickshaws by creating an organized framework for such advertising and got the Municipal Corporation of India to approve this initiative. Around 10,000 rickshaws are registered as volunteers under this system and around 5000 of them are expected to be included in the Autotisement initiative.

A new initiative called Auto Star Club is an initiative that aims improving the auto rickshaw service in India. They intend to have a call-in rickshaw service, very much like a taxi service. The auto’s would be equipped with GPS system to calculate distance and estimate the fare. The drivers would undergo and intensive etiquette and manner training sessions to deal with customers. They also want to create an organized sector for employment by giving the drivers uniforms, health-care and other retirement benefits. This would be made possible by money from the advertisements as well as higher fares.

The ‘Mission Mafia se Mukti‘ initiative is aimed at freeing up rickshaws from the clutches of the Mafia. NyayaBhoomi is still trying to raise money in order to put the some of these systems in place. Their main goal is to understand the underlying problems that causes the rickshaw service in India to be flawed, inefficient and corrupt and then work on solving the problem. It is almost a bit scary to think how we live through broken systems everyday and do very little to rectify them. NyayaBhoomi has taken that step and I hope they succeed. They made this very entertaining but very educational film about future possibilities in this sector that can be put into place as soon as Oct 2010. A hopeful film and perhaps a future possibility.

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, out in the open in a park, something that is a huge taboo in New York. Another great thing to see was the Velib bikes – a public bicycle rental program. My credit card somehow didn’t work with the system but I discovered later that one can also buy a 1 to 7 day Velib card over the internet. A similar New York bike share project summer pilot was launched in 2008 and was quickly wrapped up. I haven’t seen anything since.

Today, as I worked on the projects that pay my bills and simultaneously scanned my reader for some inspiration, a project called FreMo caught my eye – A bikeshare program in India. A couple of things did go through my mind as I scanned their websites for the deliverable and information. India is a country packed with two wheelers. Is there a need for such a service? Even if there is, the idea of taking out credit, borrowing, sharing and leasing things are not quite culturally ingrained or accepted. Also, the country seems to be accelerating in terms of per capita income of the middle class. People have more spending power. More and more college grads prefer to drive cars vs scooters and bicycles. In such a backdrop, I am glad someone thought of FreMo and opened up an option that we are conveniently negating. The option of leaving our cars behind, reducing congestion on the narrow, badly maintained roads and reducing pollution in cities full of smog is surely a welcome sign. I hope that it gets deployed. For Rs 499 lifetime membership, it seems like something I would use.

Here is more on FreMo. “FreMo” is a division of Ecomove Solutions Pvt Ltd

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 involved with , the one that caught my fancy is their Urban Traffic and Transport Information Systems, with particular reference to the city of Bangalore. (check http://btis.in/) Bangalore is India’s third most populous city and fifth-most populous urban agglomeration. As a resident of this city, I fully understand the need for a well designed and defined transport information system.

Thanks to Sean @ Babajobs.com, I was lucky to to engage in conversation with Ashwin Mahesh – CEO and Founding Member of Mapunity. Truth be told, Ashwin is a very busy man. Along with acting like an evangelist, who helps government departments gain the benefit of emerging new capabilities in technology; he co- edits a public affairs magazine – India Together, and is an urban affairs researcher at IIM Bangalore and with the Government of Karnataka. He is also part of the ABIDe – Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa’s Agenda for Bangalore Infrastructure and Development task force . I managed to weasel a precious 15 minutes of his time.

Ashwin patiently explained to me how Mapunity went about to provide beautiful and intelligent solutions to Bangalores urban chaos. (Needless to say, he was able to intervene the above mentioned space, not without having friends in higher places. Governments are skeptical of outsiders and so it helps being an advisor to the BMTC – Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation).

Bangalore follows a circular  transport system.The city’s road follow two concentric circles with outer radial lines. In order to create and redefine a system, one had to conceptually redesign the map in peoples minds. The massive shift was made from a destination based system to a direction based one. This is how Big 10 was born. It is a bus service that connects 10 major roads to the outer ring road of the city.The main goal was to achieve a situation where people would be able to identify from the bus board, where the bus goes. People need not keep wondering where to get a bus from, to reach a particular location. If one knows where the bus is going and where to get it from, it is bound to bring in more commuters.The main objective was to make public transport a better system. In order to achieve this, Ashwin suggested that one made these buses recognizable and make them stand apart. Essentially brand the whole bus. Lime green in colour and bearing the Big 10 logo in a large bold fashion, these buses can be spotted from a distance. Designed by Dig Design Studio (www.digdesignstudio.com), the logo reads as Big 10 in both English and Kanadda. Operated at high frequency, the Big 10 buses address three key elements of : predictability,  understandability and reliability .

The Big 10 took seven months of planning and execution, and is India’s first direction based system. This system also allows for more accurate tracking of the mobility patterns of people. Mapunity, has prepared and is maintaining a database for the BMTC. Ashwin and his team hold consultations, surveys and regular meetings with BMTC officials to update the database which has details about how many people travel per day, on which route and how much is the public transport system helping the public.  The data is self reveling. These buses are a favoured choice amongst frequent commuters and their popularity is only growing. 1/10th of the BMTC buses are run on this module.Currently there are 187 buses on the road and it estimated to go upto 400 buses by the end of the year.

For more information, please visit – http://www.mapunity.in/

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 too far from the truth. Well, at least, the latter. Today I had the opportunity to talk to Vijay Sharma – creator of Bambike- India’s first bicycle made of Bamboo. After accidently being enrolled at the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, Vijay’s foray into manufacturing bamboo bicycles began nearly two years ago, when his wife Niyatee bought herself a cycle to commute to work. Currently located in Bangalore, He began researching cycles online and came across the trike design. A trike (abbreviation for tricycle) is a three-wheeled vehicle, different from our very own cycle rickshaws in its placement of two wheels in the front and one at the back. While tricycles are often associated with the small three-wheeled vehicles used by pre-school children, adults also use them for a variety of purposes. In Asia and Africa, tricycles are used primarily for commercial transportation, either of passengers in pedicabs or of freight and deliveries.

The idea of trikes were far too irresistible for Vijay and soon he began to design his own. After a brief stint at a furniture design company, since he always wanted to have a workshop of his own, Vijay began his own workshop called ‘6mm Designs and Furniture’ along with two friends. It was in a rundown garage in a small alley of one of the crowded areas in Bangalore. Slowly they expanded and reached out to a bigger clientele, mass-producing furniture for them. The workshop provided Vijay with the space to continue his experiments with bicycles. The trike took 6 months to come to life – from the drawing board to execution.  Last year, a friend suggested he design a bicycle using bamboo. Armed with months of research, and with a few ideas of his own, Vijay made his very first Bambike in 3 days.  The first prototype was made with raw bamboo with metal sleeves on junctions. This resulted in a little fishtail wobbliness at high speeds. The second prototype was made using thicker bamboo sections and this time with a jig to hold all members and important junctions like bottom brackets, rear drop out, head tube and seat tube.  Here the parts were glued together without metal sleeves and using hemp fiber. A more streamlined and ergonomically superior one followed. After making the first prototype of the Bambike, Vijay met Arun Katiyar. Arun is involved with the Ride-A-Cycle Foundation that promotes biking and going green – a small way to give back to the environment. He was instrumental in encouraging Vijay to develop his bamboo bike further. While Vijay made more prototypes, Arun tested them out and gave him relevant feedback to improvise on the designs.

Bambike then went on to associate itself with TFN – Tour of the Nilgiris. The TFN is a challenging mountain bike event and would be a great avenue to test out the endurance of the bamboo bicycles as well as get it more endorsements. Vijay decided to create a bambike for the event, that would be awarded to the most sporting participant of the 8-day 900km cycling rally.

At 12 kgs, it weighs 3 kgs less than the first prototype and does not compromise on features, functionality or aesthetics. Bamboo serves as an apt material given its tensile strength and tubular structure. The fact that it is eco friendly doesn’t hurt one bit. Using Bamboo also cuts down the energy consumption as compared to steel, aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber. Bamboo has better shock- absorbing power for rough roads, and Vijay is working on a stiffer version for smooth roads.

Given the story so far, one would think that Bambike would have more buyers. This query led us to a discussion about the notion that most people have about Bamboo being a poor man’s timber. This notion tends to result in an expectation that given the material replacement, the cost of the bicycle should be tremendously cheaper. However what people seem to forget is the amount of effort that goes into the creation of a single handcrafted Bambike. While the idea of the bamboo bicycle has gained popularity in the country, it has had very few buyers. This doesn’t seem to deter Vijay’s spirit. He believes that he has achieved what he set out to, when he decided to design and create Bambike. While an increase in the sales of Bambike would definitely be a plus, he hopes for more people to start cycling for its health benefits and as an attempt by people to reduce their carbon footprints. It’s a hope for more environmental consciousness in an age of mass consumption.

For more information visit – http://handcraftedbikes.blogspot.com

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 steering column. There are no gears and a basic break mechanism stops the wheel when needed.  The brakes fail more than they work requiring its passengers to jump off the moving vehicle to place stones or blocks in front of the wheels.  Since these vehicles operate in the rural parts of India there is no registration fee or insurance or emissions inspections.  There are hundreds of Jugaad’s on rural roads of India and despite the issues of road worthiness, these vehicles reflect the true spirit of innovation in rural India”. – From HOK’s India Blog.

Read More about Jugaad here and here

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 pittance after paying the rent on their vehicles. Perhaps, he thought, they could make a bit extra by selling drinks, newspapers or even mobile-phone cards to their passengers. And since the average rickshaw covers 10km (six miles) a day, perhaps it could also courier goods around town and advertise them to passers-by.

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“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 for decades. The new “court-on-wheels” program aims to fill this critical gap in the delivery of justice and could one day be expanded across the country. Sandeep Singh, the first judge to preside over the court, has handled about 60 cases each day since the mobile court opened for business. Most have involved theft, village fights and disputes over dowries or the slaughter of cows.

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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 solar rickshaw is capable of covering a minimum of 48 kilometers. But currently the rickshaws do not have their own solar panels, they can get their batteries recharged at solar charging stations for a small amount.

For More on this read the Ecoworldly article and the Times of India article