Bangalore tech workers are the Ugly Indian
I saw a great article in the BBC about a volunteer group in Bangalore that calls themselves the Ugly Indian. The group is largely comprised of engineers and technical workers. Like engineers everywhere, they love to solve problems. The problem they decided to tackle was run-down sections of Bangalore that have become open garbage dumps. They don’t try to sell something to fix it. They don’t try to manage other to do it. They don’t create a financial pyramid scheme to loot. Like technical folks everywhere, they just wade in and do the work. Check out the Facebook page.
What really impresses me about these Indian engineers is that they don’t go off on a tangent and decide what other people want. They first learn all the “stakeholders” in the situation, the business dumping garbage, the residents in the area. In one case they cleaned up around the Bishop’s Girls School. There was a closed public restroom in the middle of the dump. First, they investigated and learned that a homeless woman was living in the restroom. Rather than report her and kick her out, the included her in the cleanup, and now she maintains and area since she now lives in a little park instead of an open dump. They took movies of the cute little girls having to walk over and around garbage on the way to school. They showed the videos to the local waste management department, and yeah, those bureaucrats have kids too, so they moved the collection point to a different location so the area would not be a garbage transfer point anymore. The Ugly Indian then enlisted the aid of the children’s van and bus drivers that wait outside the school. They made a waiting park and planted gardens, with the help of the Bishop School gardener. The area was a public urinal. Rather than try to change the fundamental nature of the human man, the Ugly Indian installed urinals and privacy partitions so the bus drivers had a place to relieve themselves.
Watching the YouTube videos of the Ugly Indian cleaning up Bangalore will really cheer you up this holiday season. They all volunteer their time and there is an ethic of anonymity, they don’t just wear medical masks for health, they do it because they don’t want to be seen as showing off in their charity. The way I waded into the Ugly Indian videos is first looking at the short and accessible http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gclDjxtDbkg. This highlights that there were many Oracle and other tech workers volunteering. This is why I think engineers and programmers and the highest form of life on the planet, we fix problems and make the world a better place.
You can see in part 2, how the tech workers fixed up this little open dump and urinal right near the Oracle building in Bangalore. It only took a few Saturday mornings, and once it was nice, people stopped using it as a urinal. They even repaired the road median so they could paint it. One nice thing about watching all the YouTube videos of the Ugly Indian, I got to liking the music track, in the Oracle one they use a well-know Indian musician, Prasanna. Here he is at the TEDx Talk, and here is a nice easy-listening mix, but I can hear some strains of Zappa in there too, maybe just coincidental use of unusual scales and keys. You traditionalists and world music aficionados will like his Sitar piece here.
So back to the Ugly Indian, after getting jazzed watching them clean up around the Oracle building, there is a much more ambitious video Despair in Defence Colony. This 7-part masterwork shows how technical people can solve intractable problems with almost no budget. They went to garbage transfer point, cleaned up the area, painted and beautified, and hung plastic banners to hide the trucks. I loved how they punched holes in the plastic. I thought it was to relive wind loads, but they said it was to make the plastic film useless to steal. But this project was great since they did some real construction. They used concrete that had been dumped in the abandoned lot to make boarders and structures and benches. Then they got really ambitious and made a large ramp structure so the small garbage carts could dump directly into the compactor truck. Once again, they got buy-in from all the affected parties. Best of all, when their home-made ramp was too rough for the small carts, the Ugly Indian asked for government help, and seeing all the work and effort, the government was inspired to finish the job with a real paved ramp with concrete aprons. Gosh it makes me proud. With all the finance scum and politicians and hustlers and Ponzi scheme scam artists, here are our fellow technical workers just going out and making the world a better place.
Once you are blown away by how quickly and directly these Indian technical workers improved a decades-old eyesore, you are ready to see the epic, the 18-part SpotFixing at Bishop Cotton. This is where they fixed up a garbage dump and open urinal that was right next to the Bishop Cotton Girl’s School. Like I said, all the hard work was impressive, just what you would expect from technical types, but what really impressed me was how the Ugly Indian worked with the government, the school, the homeless women living in the restroom, the gardener, the van and bus drivers, and especially the students. The Ugly Indian say they never have to ask for volunteers to do painting, something Mark Twain noted in his classic Tom Sawyer story.
After this epic you might want something quick and light, I highly recommend Hello Koramangala! - The Ugly Indian drops in, where the Ugly Indian cleans up a playground and cricket pitch.
Now for an excellent feel-good human interest piece, the Nightmare on Museum Road is 4-part Ugly Indian spotfix that has the kind of Karma you might expect from a bunch of Indians doing good works. It turns out that the ugly wall was owned by the descendant of Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, the famous engineer that helped modernize the Indian Republic. He is the fellow for which they hold Engineer’s Day on September 15th, which I think is a day we engineers should celebrate all over the world. If you want to know why India will soon surpass the United States as a superpower, it is because they celebrate Engineer’s Day and we celebrate Lindsey Lohan.
Once you learn about Sir MV, you can dig into the Wikipedia entries on Bangalore and the Mysore state of India. All and all it will be a happy and uplifting spirit. Watching these Ugly Indian videos and maybe a re-watch of The World’s Fastest Indian, will convince you of the fundamental decency and honor of the human race and maybe you can get through another holiday season without throwing yourself off a bridge.
Down commented:
Clothing has always been a thing that has been given a great imcortanpe by human beings. It displays the attitude that the people exhibit. Lots of brands have been existent in the clothing industry and a famous one among them is the Ed hardy clothing brand.The brand got its name from the famous American tattoo artist Ed Hardy. He was a very famous tattoo artist and has published many books on tattooing techniques. But his tattooing turned into a brand by the efforts of a company called Christian Audiger. This company was a very famous and very powerful company in the field of clothing. They felt that it would be appropriate to create a brand called Ed hardy and use Hardy's art as the main selling point for the brand. This venture had turned out to be a very successful one and Ed hardy clothing is one of the most famous brands in the clothing industry.The brand became very famous because it was worn by many famous celebrities like Madonna, Britney spears and also Sylvester Stallone. The brand has clothes for men, women, and kids. They have also diversified their business by having a lot of accessories to support their clothing business. for men they have a variety of products such as active wear, denim, outwear, swim trucks, sweaters, t-shirts, tops etc. the accessories include things such as belts, caps, scarves, shoes, socks, jeweler, sunglasses, ties and even wallets.The art works is a unique combination of American and Japanese cultures. The unique selling proposition of the brand is the way in which the company has used the art works of Ed hardy.
Nishchay commented:
Gr8 write up..
nikhil commented:
Thanks Andy u motivate us:-)
Vishy Kuruganti commented:
Great compendium and writeup.
btw, I think @cnn is missing a key point with this comment "Well, if the Bangalore City Corporation workers performed their duties adequately, we wouldn't need these "Ugly Indians"!"
CNN commented:
Well, if the Bangalore City Corporation workers performed their duties adequately, we wouldn't need these "Ugly Indians"!
lady commented:
When a FB reader asked them how they can motivate themselves to do something that has no rewards....TUI answered that the results is the reward they get.
Amazing set of people.
Lady commented:
The TUI group seems to consist of Engineers, Designers, Managers, Artists and certainly people with a lot of PR skills! It's amazing to see how they bring together so many sections of society and make it happen.
I Like The Ugly Indian commented:
Editor seems to be a tech worker but not all TUI's are tech workers. Some of the tech workers are also the ugly indians.
ratpik commented:
Well the Ugly Indians are not all tech workers or engineers. A lot many of them are artists,architects,designers,environmentalists and other people in varied professions too!
desiusa commented:
ok its easy.... any garbage within 12 ft of owners property is to be managed by the property owner or face fines....now lets see who throws garbage where????
The Ugly American commented:
Lindsey Lohan for President! What the hell, with Palin, Bachmann, Cain, Newt (God have mercy, Newt? REALLY? NEWT???) Paul, et al, why not just throw some more trash on the pile. The end of an empire, to be sure.
BobSound commented:
This is simply amazing. I agree that enginners and technical folks are the highest form of life on the planet. I bet you'll never see bankers and wall-street type doing that. Would get their Brooks Brothers suits and Italian shoes dirty. Then they would have all kinds of spreadsheets to show how it would NOT be worthwhile to do it.
I wish they would make a full-length feature movie about this. Kind of like that Chinese quasi-documentary movie, "Last Train Home". That would open people's eyes and hearts to the less fortunate in the world.
Shashidhar HE commented:
Let is do more of this in each Indian city, town and village. Forget the Government. They are too busy with other seemingly more important matters?
Urb Anwriter commented:
re: US Engineer. Don't take offense, or affront, because none is intended nor implied. This story is a little bit of positive press - in human interest terms - for a nation/people/occupation that are seldom noted. I don't think anyone who saw anything on BBC, or here, or any of the other zillion possibilities on the Web would have taken this article as a slight to American (read favourite nationality here) engineers.
When I did my degree, rather late in life, there were more people in India making $100,000/p.a. than in the US, a great many of them engineers I should think. And in a nation where the rich/poor divide compares favourably with the financial comparisons between the Koch brothers and some guy living out of his shopping cart this article shows a little humanity, a little kindness, a little show of connection between members of society.
All the best to all,
kgrdr
Paul Rako commented:
@Urb Anwriter
You are exactly right about my misspelling. I will fix it right now.
Ram krish commented:
This is an awesome feat - Borm engineers they did the LAMDA and went to the Gemba.... Engieers move the world and now clean up the world too.. Ram
narendra commented:
It is we who destroy nature in the name of development and work towards getting nature back. The need for education leading to understand the foundations of life viz. live and let live applies to every aspect of life and not compete with people, environment, nature, etc. to destroy them for MY BENEFIT.
Anandan commented:
It is nice to know that some techies take of their surroundings.
manish commented:
very inspiring
keep it up
US Engineer commented:
Thanks for the great article on the Ugly Indian. Sounds like a great group takin care of some of India's problems.
We have many great engineer groups in the US, with worldwide reach, that you seem to forget about ("Lets celebrate the Indian Engineers Day in September (since US only celebrates Linsay Lohan)") Get a life and support National Engineers Week in the US (third week of Feb every year since 1951; Feb 19-25 2011).
WN commented:
This is a good thing. Unfortunately, as in many developing countries, the garbage will come back in no time. The US used to be really good. That is not quite true anymore. With city budget cuts, it has become more difficult to clean up. We are even relying on volunteers to clean up the freeways.
Cor van de Water commented:
Hi Andy,
Tagging is not common in India - driving and riding (my bicycle) all around Hyderabad, I have seldom seen any tags. Advertisements in all shapes and forms all the more though. I agree that most Indian people are great at keeping their own lawn clean by simply tossing their waste across the compound wall into an empty lot or stream. That is a kind of awareness that has to be instilled into a generation and can be lost in a generation, depending on the values that parents give to their children or not. I see USA on the way back and India not yet really starting to move forward with this and the status quo is supported by arguments like "the street is cleaned every night, so why not toss waste in the street?" (You read that right, all main streets are cleaned every single night in the city in India)
Still, if there is a rundown place and dump or wall that is used as urinal then such a place will easily go from bad to worse, it gets infested, people avoid it unless it is convenient... To clean up such a place and make permanent changes such as adding a building with urinals and a beautiful garden instead of a dump, will guide others to do the right thing even if they are indifferent, because it shows to them that not everyone is indifferent.
John L commented:
Andy T.....
Lighten up!..
The struggle for a better world never ends.
That is the nature of living.
You are correct, indifference is major problem.
It is born out of ignorance and selfishness.
Regardless of indifference around us, we should continue to try to improve our world as we best we can.
As demonstrated, when a small group of demonstrate they are willing to take action, the "larger" scale forces will often follow up with support.
"Ugly Indian"... thanks to the group for your efforts.
Urb Anwriter commented:
Paul, I'd already seen some of this @ BBC and was encouraged... just by people's effort, not because they were engineers. : ) But I think you got one word wrong here "cleaned up the area, painted and beatified, and hung plastic banners[,]" when you might have meant 'beautified.' I think, though I might be wrong, that only the Pope can officially 'beatify.' It's a good piece; while I'm an electronics beginner, and in my virtual dotage to boot, I live to write.
All the best,
Andy T commented:
Let's see a picture a year later - I bet you'll see tags spray painted on the wall and garbage in the streets. There's a fundamental indifference that causes a society to pee on anything convenient, and that is rooted in its core values. A few enlightened "moms" cleaning up after the slobs is not going to change the slobs across the cross section of society.
The US is no different - look at all the "superfund" sites it has, and the Love Canal fiasco in NY State not too long ago. Look at the way McDonald's garbage is simply tossed out of a car window - it's more important for the indifferent to have a neat interior for one or two people to see, than for tens of thousands to see it everyday on their commute. Look at the way clean air and water legislation is being ransacked. It's not the actors that are at fault, it is the indifferent of society that are to blame for ALLOWING it to happen in the first place. A few "good" individuals can set an example, but if there's no perceived personal benefit, it's business as usual in indifferent societies ("thanks for improving the contrast for my next gang tagging"). It takes society pressure to make the changes, not a few geeks on a weekend - the scale is just not significant enough.
Indifference is the destroyer of societies and democracy itself. Bangalore has it. The US has it, both in tangible and intangible forms.
If we could treat everyday as a "holiday", maybe we might be better off.
