What makes people give us the little of ugly Indian?
Answers
Answer:
Spotfixing
TUI calls cleaning the street "spotfixing". TUI chooses small segments of road each week to clean: pavements piled up with plastic, defaced walls, footpaths rendered unusable by potholes as spotfixing places. All tools, materials and instructions are provided on the spot. All spot-fixes are self-funded and volunteers are requested to make a contribution towards material costs.
Guidelines for volunteers
The Ugly Indian's philosophy is "Kaam chalu mooh bandh. Stop Talking, Start Working." Apart from this, TUI has general guidelines regarding spot-fixing.
No lectures, no moralising, no activism, no self-righteous anger.
No confrontation, no arguments, no debates, no pamphlets, no advocacy.
Don’t step on anyone’s toes, don’t take sides in any ideological debates.
Support existing systems and improve their effectiveness for the greater good.
Basically, get real. Treat everyone with sincerity, respect and dignity first, and the greater good will be an outcome."
Solution
TUI recognizes the spot-fix as a success only if:
It lasts for at least 90 days.
It requires no ongoing supervision.
It is low-cost (ideally free) and easy to implement and replicate
It changes the behaviour and attitudes of all concerned
It creates minimal disruption in the daily actions of everyone concerned (nobody should lose a job, lose a source of income, or get seriously inconvenienced – because it takes only one Ugly Indian to undo the good work of a hundred others.
Anonymity
Anonymity is a big attraction of the movement. The Ugly Indian describes itself as a "faceless, leaderless" volunteer organization. It is made up of self-driven and motivated people who are mostly professionals in the 25–40 age group. They remain strictly anonymous. The Ugly Indians have chosen to remain anonymous as the names and identities of specific individuals are not important and they respond to media queries only by email. The founder of the group generated controversy for the derogative group name, which was probably a reference to himself.
Projects
Project Under the Flyover (UFO)
Project UFO was started by TUI in Bangalore, India to clean and reclaim spaces under flyovers. This project is citizen led and has transformed 30 flyovers since 2015. The UFO project has already spread to New Delhi, Pune and Chennai where new groups have taken up the responsibility of cleaning and beautifying these unmaintained spaces.
Progression of Project UFO
Project UFO was created in order to combat unwanted posters, open urination, garbage dumping and illegal parking in spaces underneath flyovers. There is an observation called ‘The Broken Window theory’ which states that if there is a broken window on a street, windows on that same street are more likely to be broken. This effect can be caused by vandals who assume that since one window is broken, it is acceptable for more windows to be broken. It may also be caused by everyday people who see a broken window and think that they do not have a responsibility to repair their own window. Activities such as garbage dumping and graffiti spread in the same way that broken windows spread. The basis of Project UFO is to reclaim public spaces under flyovers by cleaning and beautifying them, thus reducing the chance that people will continue to dump waste and place unwanted posters in these areas.
The first attempt at reclaiming a flyover was attempted by anonymous citizens in early 2015 and was completed at Richmond Circle flyover, Bangalore. According to one of the volunteers who was interviewed by ‘The Hindu’, the first attempt at rejuvenating the area under Richmond Circle flyover was a failure. The Ugly Indian refined their designs and tactics to dissuade people from defacing the pillars of the flyover and applied their new design pattern on Jayadeva Flyover in October 2015. In essence, these new designs were to act as poster repellent. Seizing upon their initial success, they replicated the work across 25 flyovers and exhibited the work done under Hebbal Flyover on 10 January 2016.
Although initially the funding was purely from citizens, emboldened by the success stories of Project UFO, private companies started taking active part by donating corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds to the cause. Political officials such as ex-Mayor K. S. Satyanarayana have participated in similar events and spot fixes under the flag of TUI.