In this research, I have sought to interrogate the precarity in the experience of citizens as they seek to move around the Bengaluru through other modes such as public buses, walking, and cycling within the context of a regnant automobility regime. This project builds upon experiential, research creation, and festival-advocacy elements to project the lived reality of navigating the automotive saturated streets of the city. Three research projects were undertaken:
1. Bus design challenge. With the support of District 3, an innovation hub located in Concordia University, I piloted a design challenge for interdisciplinary teams of students at Concordia University. The objective of the challenge was to design Inclusive buses for the city of Bengaluru. Each team was required to do the following: show empathy for those who could be better included within a global transit system; clearly define the issue and focus on enhancing inclusivity; create an innovative idea; and produce a minimal viable prototype. Team ideas were evaluated by a panel of judges that included members from the Bengaluru Bus Prayanikara Vedike or Bengaluru Bus Commuter Forum. The challenge was conducted over a ten-week period from September to November 2014. To create a collaborative environment where judges, experts from Bengaluru, student teams could share thoughts, ideas, and information, a tumblr site was created. Video footage, relevant media and articles, public policy reports were shared on the tumblr site to provide teams with resources to base their ideas. The winning team of Michael Maclean and Pascal Poirier received the opportunity to travel to Bengaluru and present their idea to the forum. Their idea was to approach gender safety on buses through a multi-faceted design strategy that incorporated both communicative and physical elements. They sought to make two design interventions – transform bus stops into inclusive spaces where women would feel welcome to loiter and spend time as a public space. And second, they proposed a communication strategy by creating posters on buses and bus stops as well as flyers for commuters that would communicate the sense of what is harassment, that harassment is not a good thing and that it does not need to be encouraged.
2. Manifesto for Inclusive buses. In November 2014, together with Deepak Srinivasan , a performance artist, media practitioner, researcher, and, at that time, a faculty member at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology we received funding from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute for a Partnership Research Grant to design a manifesto for inclusive public transport buses in Bengaluru. We proposed for a series of public student-drive design charettes and collaborative exercises with members of the public that would lead to the compilation of a manifesto for inclusive buses in Bengaluru. In this effort we were led by Bengaluru Bus Commuter Forum and Alternate Law Forum who brought their ability to mobilize civil society and articulate a powerful pro-poor, pro-inclusivity element to the venture.
Capitalizing on the resources and energy available through the partnership grant, the Bengaluru Bus Commuter Forum organized these discrete student events into a Bus Festival branded as the Janasnehi Bussigagi or Towards people-friendly buses. Festival events were organized with the intent of offering alternative imaginations of bus travel by spotlighting and bringing different marginalized groups into the public discourse on bussing in the Bengaluru. For examples, events examined the class-segregated bus travel in the city, included a mobile media gallery that catalogued the experiences of bus travel for working women, or provided a workshop for the differently abled.
3. Social Life of a Bus. In 2015, with financial support extended by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and in partnership with the Bengaluru Bus Commuter Forum, I scripted and directed a documentary film titled the Social Life of a Bus. Focusing on intra-city public buses, this film attempts to understand the challenges of commuting in a city that is rapidly transitioning to an automobile-centric mode of movement. Buses in Bengaluru are a particularly interesting location because of some recent challenges. Although, buses in the city shoulder a major share of people movement, mobility choices are influenced by the rapid rise in automobility, which in itself is influenced by policy priorities in favor of massive, government-subsidised, infrastructure investments (such as metro, tolled elevated roads, signal free corridors, flyovers) geared towards promoting private automobility. At the same time, the city’s public transportation agency, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), operates without the benefit of either government subsidies or direct citizen oversight. Against this interlinked techno-political and institutional context, focusing on three aspects – safety, equity, and accessibility – of social relations on buses, this film proposes we pay more attention to them. Buses continue to remain our ticket to safer and more equal and sustainable cities.
Associates
Deepak Sreenivasan, Srishti College of Art and Design
Publications
- Social Life of a Bus. Documentary directed, produced, and scripted Govind Gopakumar, editing Chinmayi Arakali, videography B. R. Viswanath, made in partnership with Bengaluru Bus Prayanikara Vedike (Bangalore Bus Commuter Forum), 2015.
- “Social Life of a Bus” Journal of Video Ethnography, 3, 1, Spring 2016.
- Bengaluru Bus Manifesto (did not author but was produced as a direct result of the partnership with the Bangalore Bus Commuter Forum).
Funding
