Campaign in MMTS on 4th Jan

(Sign the petition on http://www.petitiononline.com/mmts4hyd/)

It was great to see the response to the online petition in the first two days. I hope the word spreads and we gather more signatures soon.

However, there was a development that I would like to share with all. On 3rd January, the Hitec City station was a total mess in the morning between 9am and 11am. There was a swarm of autos in the parking but there were no drivers. When asked, I came to know that they had all together left to tackle some conflict with the police leaving all of us stranded at the station. There were about 200 people at the parking who were slowly spreading out the stretch of the road. To add to that, the next train arrived adding a few more hundreds to the existing herd. Now it was a total mess. As expected the traffic also halted, taking away of any chance of alternative transport.

I tried gathering up people to have discussion and possibly come out with something. But people were hardly worried about all that. They were more worried about getting late to office. Quite natural, but I felt that was a time to think about the problem rather than the consequence. (I managed to talk to a few of them who were concerned though.)

However, that experience urged me and one of my colleagues to take another step in this effort. We felt we should take a direct campaign activity. We took out printouts containing an appeal to sign the petition and made small slips out of them. (will post a picture of one soon) I started from Secunderabad and the other guy started from Begumpet at a later time and we distributed these slips among the people.

This seemed like a bit more effective way of spreading the word, though a little extra effort is demanded. The result is also showing up in the number of signatures.

But we wished there were more people with us doing this so that we can reach out to many more. I hope some of you step forward and join us in this. You can shoot a mail to me or leave a comment in this or any posts on this blog.