At 9.30 a.m. on a Monday morning, a group of six young software professionals are heading to work in Gachibowli. They halt at the bustling IIIT junction, wear safety gear and take positions. Within a few minutes, they are directing and controlling traffic, ensuring that the rush hour chaos slowly subsides and traffic becomes orderly. The smooth traffic flow is a big relief for regular motorists commuting on the road. By 11 a.m., the team is off its ‘traffic duty’ and heads back to office and their schedules. This has been the Monday routine of six software professionals - Anumod Thomas, Niraj Bhilegaonkar, Anil Kumar Gogada, Riddhi Kotdiya, Puneet Singh and Gangadhar Vasupalli of Microsoft for nine weeks now.
The idea of regulating traffic was born out of an intention to encourage travellers to follow traffic rules. “Monday is the first day of the week and no one wants to get stuck in traffic. If you can drive smoothly at one junction, during peak hours, for one day in a week, that’s a big relief,” explains Puneet on their decision to choose a Monday. “Earlier, when coming from Gachibowli stadium to IIIT junction, one had to wait for an hour. Now, one just waits for the red signal to clear. It’s no magic,” exults Anumod as Puneet chips in: “We are just ensuring commuters follow traffic rules. These are basic and normal things like seeing that people stay on the left side to avail the free left passage.”
When the team began this exercise in April they wanted to test themselves. “If you save 10 minutes for each person, you are saving around 10,000 minutes. It’s a small start and we wanted to see how far we could take it. It is truly an inspiring act and totally addictive,” smiles Puneet. “It’s a form of reaching out. It takes one and a half hours of your whole week,” says Anumod. For over two months now, the junction has become an easy zone for commuters and appreciation of ‘good job’ has also lifted the team's spirits.
In fact, Anumod has been credited with the creation of T.O.F.F.E.E (Total Offense Free Entity), a traffic awareness initiative that’s been creating a buzz in the city. T.O.F.F.E.E started four years ago in association with Cyberabad police with a simple thought“A friend of mine was driving in the right direction but was hit by a lorry and died on the spot. I met the then DCP and expressed my wish that we do something to increase people’s awareness of basic rules. He advised, “See how you can contribute from your own office.” One thing led to another and T.O.F.F.E.E was born with an idea that employees who have all the documents in place should be exempted from routine document checking. “Suppose as a good citizen, you have all the vehicle documents in place and you are in a rush. Suddenly when someone stops you to check documents, you end up losing time; this leads to frustration,” says Puneet. Instead, with a T.O.F.F.E.E sticker, the motorist has to just show the sticker, instead of all the documents. This initiative began with Microsoft employees showing their stickers and employees of other companies also evincing interest in the initiative. “At first these stickers were valid only in Cyberabad but with the new announcement that they are valid all over Hyderabad, it has boosted our confidence.”
Explaining how T.O.F.F.E.E works, Puneet says, “A sizeable number of employees from any institution can approach Cyberabad police and upload their documents. Our team of volunteers scans the documents and then the Cyberabad traffic police department does a check and issues the sticker. These stickers come with a validity period.”
The third edition of T.O.F.F.E.E was launched recently with 350 Microsoft employees flaunting their vehicle stickers at its campus. While Wipro rolled out this programme for their employees last year, other tech companies in the city have also shown interest. As for choosing the name T.O.F.F.E.E, the duo smile, “We wanted something soft, something which implies sweetness.”
This year, they hope more T.O.F.F.E.Es are issued. “If you help someone, the satisfaction is truly addictive.”
How to get a T.O.F.F.E.E
The first step is to ensure that each applicant has all the proper documents in place – vehicle registration certificate, lifetime tax paid receipt for non-AP registered vehicles, insurance, driving license and a valid pollution control certificate. Each of these documents are scrutinised by a team of T.O.F.F.E.E volunteers at Microsoft. The next step is to monitor the applicant’s driving and parking in and around campus for about a fortnight. Applications of only those employees who successfully clear both the above steps are submitted to the Cyberabad traffic police department, who in turn verify the documents before issuing the stickers. This entire process, driven in association with the Microsoft global security team, is automated so that successful applicants receive timely reminders of renewals of documents before they expire.
