'The Ugly Indians' make Bangalore shine

BANGALORE: Last Friday morning was like any other on a stretch of Outer Ring Road near Bellandur, where thousands of the city's tech workers pass by. The spot in focus: right outside the Accenture building, where an old water pipe passes over the drain. Piled-up garbage is a nuisance for pedestrians.
At 10 am, around 30 employees from a nearby technology services centre walked up to the spot, clad in white T-shirts and caps, brooms in hand, which they put to good use.They set about building a 30ft long safety wall along the open drain, then removed posters from the water pipe and painted it. Within two hours, the "spot fix" was done, and volunteers proudly posed for photographs, before getting back to work.
Every week in Bangalore, at least five or six such spot fixes are done. Be it filth on a footpath, paan stains on walls, open dumps, cigarette litter, death traps or public urinal spots, there are simple and smart solutions for all problems. The credit goes to The Ugly Indians (TUI), a group of anonymous volunteers who're on a scrub-and-shine campaign working on spot fixes over the past few years, to give Bangalore a burnish.
TUI members, who believe in the 'Kaam chaalu mooh bandh (start working, stop talking)' formula, have become a huge inspiration for not only Bangaloreans but many cities across the country, especially in the past few months. Evidence of this lies in the number of likes on their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/theugl.yindian), which have ballooned from around 30,000 in December 2013 to 72,000 plus now.
The page is constantly updated and volunteers from different areas of the city, from Malleswaram to Rajajinagar to Whitefield, share their success stories and learn from each other. In some cases, volunteers take the support of ground level workers of civic agencies to realize the goal as they believe in supporting the existing systems and improving their effectiveness for the greater good.
As TUI members explain, teams in Ludhiana, Agra, Kanpur, Vishakapatnam, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune are on board, and soon, teams from Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Goa are set to join them. All these are spontaneous teams formed locally, drawing inspiration from the TUI FB page, which publishes results of work done. Anyone anywhere in India can do a spot fix and the transformation will be posted on FB, he added.
'No lectures, no activism, just work...'
In an interview to TOI, a member of The Ugly Indians explained the trick behind converting despair to hope.
You are a huge inspiration for many. What is your inspiration?
The fact is that spot fixes work and create a real change. They get everyone's support -- the public and government. Kaam chalu mooh bandh is an approach that works.
The public response has been dramatic...
Yes, mainly because there are no lectures, no activism, arguments or stepping on anyone's toes. We just support existing systems and improve their effectiveness for the greater good. In fact, there are lots of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and several East European countries writing in to learn how to spot fix!
What is the key to realize solutions to these problems?
It's important to realize that all of us are ugly Indians, and if each of us went out and took charge of our little stretch of street (right outside our home or office), we would transform this city and country. It's happening in Bangalore already -- one ugly spot at a time.
Does the public taking ownership of things bring change?
We like to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi with a slight twist: If you want to Be the change you want to See, you need to first See the change you want to Be. TUI wants to show people success stories by regular citizens to inspire them to come out and do. That it's possible to solve chronic civic issues by simply taking ownership and going out and doing it.