Bengaluru Citizens Team up With Authorities to Battle Potholes

Residents in Bengaluru team with civic officials to create a map of civic problems that need attention.

A pothole on one of Bengaluru’s roads. (Photo: The News Minute)

A residents’ group in Bengaluru has teamed up with civic officials to create a map of civic problems in south-east Bengaluru demanding attention.

A group of residents of Bengaluru’s HSR Layout have put together a map of civic problems along with BBMP officials and sent a letter to the Joint Commissioner (Bommanahalli), area MLA Sathish Reddy and the Chief minister this week.

The crowd-sourced map has been curated by HSR Layout-based independent IT consultant, Syed Imran based on the information from a group of representatives from all the seven sectors of the area. The map shows places having potholes, garbage pile up problem and garbage burning problem.

Screengrab of the map. (Photo: The News Minute)

Zahid S Javali, editor of Resident Watch which is a hyper-local magazine that focuses on issues in HSR Layout, spoke about how they were coming together to battle the bad roads.

<p> We have a WhatsApp group called Resident’s Watch that we started four months ago. It has played a key role in getting officials and representatives from every sector to interact. During such one such conversation we realised that two arterial roads in the layout were being asphalted repeatedly even when they were in good condition. While we are discussing many issues we thought we should bring it to the public forum. </p>

Thirty-seven-year-old Imran said that he used the basic dashboard strategy, which he has used to solve supply chain problems for foreign clients, to highlight civic issues in the area.

<p> Another friend and I are the only ones who can access the map and make changes. The other 70 members in the group including BBMP Joint Commissioner (Bommanahalli) send pictures and send geo-location to us. We accordingly mark in the map. The facts jump out of the page and grab the user’s attention.</p>

<p>Syed Imran, IT Consultant</p>

Muniraju, BBMP Joint Commission (Bommanahalli) said that corporation would look into the situation of the roads after 5 January.

<p> We have been waiting for the MLC elections so far. Since I was also involved in curating the potholes and garbage menace map, I will make sure the ward roads are looked into. </p>