Sustainable Mobility Award 2011 - Praja get special recognition from Volvo

Praja got special recognition from Volvo at Sustainable Mobility Award 2011. Several Praja projects were nominated for the award, and all of them were appreciated together through the special recognition for Praja (the concept!) itself.

It all started through this website around 4 years ago, as an experiment to find like minded citizen enthusiasts, to see if ordinary and no-name people can collaborate in meaningful ways. Manjari seeded Bus Day, and thanks to the help from several others (Jenny, Narayan, Srivatsava, Bharat, more!) who met each other on Praja, and of course the unprecedented support from BMTC, Bangalore got a path breaking monthly event. Getting us a Commuter Rail service seemed, and still seems like an uphill task. but we got Sanjeev & Sathya (aka idontspam) leading us with help from Naveen, Syed and more to just keep pushing at it. There are several change seeding efforts, ranging from the likes of Mobilicity Event (Shekhar, Neha, Jenny), Non Motorized Transportation framework (Srinidhi), Bus Priority System (Naveen, Milind, Venu), to Disciplined Drivers Club (Bheema), CBD Congestion Charging proposal, Drive Well Day etc etc, each at various degree and level of effort, structure and impact.

Some say its our weakness, to many of us that's the strength. To put in Volvo representative's words, they weren't sure which individual to name and call on the stage for the award. That's as utopian as it gets - a true group, known only as Praja, and seen the way any participant wants to see it.

Cheers to the gang of 18, who call themselves the Praja RAAG (Praja Research Analysis & Advocacy Group, does the report writing and advocacy work as tighter, offline group), and the extended community that supports in their enthusiastic ways from around the world through the praja.in website.

With a rich ideation & advocacy platform going here, there is no better constructive-criticism & solution focused, open and "bring your own ideology, just produce something concrete' group that exists the way we do. Cheers to us, and everyone who believes in the concept. Lets make it better and do our bits to enrich it.

Some facts even the regular readers may not know about Praja:

• Till about last week, none of us had seen the person who sent out some annoying RTIs around BIAL, helped write the Namma Railu Report, pushed everyone hard on Bus Day through relentless mails and calls. Seeing is beleiving, Syed is for real.
• 2 co-authors of the BPS Concept paper (Milind, Venu) have never met or seen the other two co-authors
• The early set of individuals who built the website 3 years ago are yet to meet as a group. One of them has not been seen by any Praja RAAG or Praja website member to this day!! Hope that he will resurface some day, and we will actually get to see him. Tarlesubba aka Vadiraj Hombal :)
• About fifty years separate the youngest (Rithesh, or Manjari?) from the oldest member (Murali?) of Praja RAAG :)

There are more facts like above, but above may be enough to demostrate the possibilities for collaboration in this increasingly Internet-driven world.

Cheers, to everyone who hangs out here,
silkboard aka Pranav, on behalf of Praja RAAG.