City Pulse

In an event hosted by Janaagraha, employees of Capital First downloaded the Public Eye app and reported on traffic violations using the same. They also took to the road to raise awareness on traffic violations.The event began with employees of Capital First clicking pictures of violations near Bowring and Lady Curzon hospital at Infantry road near Shivaji Nagar.

They took also took pictures of auto rickshaws parked illegally on the roadside and uploaded the same on the Public Eye app.Capital First is a provider of financial service across consumer and wholesale businesses, with aspirations to grow into a significant financial conglomerate.

Mohammad Ghouse, sales manager at Capital First, and a proud resident of Bengaluru city recalls how the city’s traffic has worsened over the last few years. “The Public Eye app is a very engaging way to report on traffic violations. The app is user-friendly and will also keep the youth involved in such civic activities,” he adds.Another team member, Aprajita articulates the advantage of using the app to connect with the traffic police, and also how ignorant the youth has been about such civic issues in their neighborhood earlier. “I never used to pay attention to illegally parked vehicles in my area before; I thought the government authorities would take care of it. We used to curse the rules but now today, I have clicked four pictures already and reported them. From my end, I have done my bit,” she further adds.

The campaign finally took to the Commercial Street junction, where the employees of Capital First held placards at the traffic junction to raise public awareness on traffic violations.Later, the group went to the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) at Infantry road. A video by Bangalore City Traffic Police (BCTP) regarding the traffic rules, signal monitoring, interceptions and accident clips, was shown to the group.

The idea behind this session was to show people the working of the Public Eye app and how the pictures they send are received by the Bangalore Traffic Police servers and how around twenty thousand traffic challans are issued in the city every day.The group also visited the traffic police control room to verify the functioning and surveillance first hand.A brief FAQs session with the Sub Inspector, Vasanth Bhagwat, giving out the necessary information on the working of the traffic police proved to be useful. He explained how the collection of data and surveillance is carried out in the city.

He emphasized the growing concern on the number of vehicles in the city per day and put the data around 98 lakh registered vehicles on the streets as of November 2015.He said that there were 330 cameras installed in Bengaluru city, covering the busy junctions and more than 100 cameras were to come up soon. Bangalore Traffic Police proudly recall that they had bagged the ‘Urban Mobility Award 2011’.

Pramod Kumar KV, the employee of Capital First, was very happy about his visit to the Traffic Control Centre and the awareness about the traffic issue.‘It is good for such awareness to be raised and we will avoid breaking traffic related rules in the future. I will impart the information I gathered to my friends and family members. I’m really proud to be associated with this event’, he added.