When your car swerves dangerously as you try to avoid yet another pothole or you navigate a darkened road nervously, its street lamps broken, you complain; sometimes under your breath, sometimes out loud to friends and family. You complain because, after all, what else can you do? As it turns out, a lot. Last year, three Indian students graduating from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, got tired of passive activism. Social Cops was born when Prukalpa Sankar from Hyderabad, Varun Banka from Ranchi and Harjoben Singh from Jallandhar decided to harness the power of these citizen data, creating a platform to empower people at a hyper-local level.
Funded project by project, its office in a small apartment in Khirki Extension of New Delhi, this tech start-up harnesses citizen voice as a resource to solve real-life problems. The Social Cops mobile phone application, designed in a way that uses crowd sourced data for different projects, presents a simple, effective platform for citizens to upload information; pictures, locations and descriptions. For each project, the organisation ties up with community stakeholders ranging from public agencies, corporates, NGOs to local volunteer groups and resident welfare associations. Once the data, gathered from the citizens, is in place, it is used to solve these real life problems of civic issues, woman's safety, public health and road safety. “Initially, we attempted to secure the seed money and funding by participating in as many student competitions as we could. We won some, but in all, the judges were bound to at least lend an ear to our idea. Organisations like the Singapore International Foundation were a great support, connecting us to people who wanted to lend a helping hand”, adds Sankar.
Social Cops’ ongoing road safety campaign is titled SteertoSafety. “It is estimated that 3 persons die every hour in India just due to accidents caused by bad road infrastructure. Mayors and Commissioners lack information regarding where to allocate resources – and providing this information from the ground leads to long term impact. We are looking to turn citizen energy and voice into tangible data to help identify areas needing better resource allocation. The heat map generated from the campaign will be sent to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi for long-term planning and allocation” says Sankar.
Social Cops had already been working with on-ground citizen groups and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (Ward 103) to understand how citizen data can contribute to better processes and decision making for issues such as garbage collection. “Road issues was a natural progression” says Sankar. The campaign funding has been relatively and surprisingly easy. Along with Michelin India and PVR Nest running the program as part of their corporate social responsibility, on-ground volunteers from NGOs Roses and Volunteer Now have also been roped in!”
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the SteertoSafety campaign, the team feels, is to communicate to the cititzens that Social Cops is not a complaint mechanism. “We are a data and analytics tool…it is important for citizens to realize that their voice is a tangible data point that will aid better planning and resource allocation in the long run,” says Sankar. She adds that data is an incredibly powerful resource to solve some of the biggest problems on roads – broken streetlights, open manholes and roads under construction. Already, Social Cops saw success when the I Lead Ranchi youth brigade ran a campaign on the Social Cops platform to crowd source broken streetlights. This information from the ground presented in a data driven format led to almost 2.15 crores of allocation from Ranchi Municipal Corporation to fix the problems
With over 6000 voices across Delhi working towards identifying the major road issues in the city, the campaign is fast collecting data on potholes, open manholes, broken streetlights, broken Pavements, traffic jams, water logging and much more. So far, a brief analysis by the data station has made valuable observations, as well as launching an interactive map of the city that allows you to identify the biggest potholes in your area.
Citizens can download the ‘Social Cops’ Android Application on Google Play Store and 'Raise a Voice' regarding road infrastructure issues like open manholes, broken pavements, broken streetlights and potholes. You can also visit >www.socialcops.org/steertosafety and click voice now to submit reports online.
Analysis of the data so far-
Almost 50% of the voices were made in South and South Delhi.
About 53% of the voices were regarding potholes.
Voices from North West Delhi were predominantly about Broken Streetlights.
North East Delhi had the least number of overall voices per population.
Voices regarding open manholes were few, with none coming in from North East Delhi.
