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Inspire Someone Today
Inspire Someone Today
E143 | From Passion to Profession to Community - P2 | Arun Pai
Meet Bangalore's self-appointed "Footpath Mayor," Arun Pai, whose two-decade journey from tour guide to urban mobility advocate offers a masterclass in civic problem-solving. What began as walking tours for tourists evolved into a passionate mission to transform how residents experience their city on foot.
When taking international dignitaries on walks through Bangalore's neighborhoods, Pai noticed a troubling pattern - nobody seemed responsible for the city's footpaths. Traffic police managed vehicles, tourism officials promoted the city, but pedestrian infrastructure fell through the bureaucratic cracks. Rather than just complaining, he decided to take action in the most straightforward way possible: by walking.
The Bangalore Footpath Challenge emerged as his innovative solution - rating 100 kilometers of footpaths on a simple five-point scale, similar to how restaurant apps rate dining experiences. This data-driven approach caught attention from government officials and urban planners who recognized the value of objective measurement in addressing infrastructure gaps. Pai cleverly created memorable frameworks like GST (Garbage, Shops, Trenches) and OFF (Obstacle-Free Footpaths) to categorize and tackle common obstacles.
What truly transformed this initiative into a movement was its inclusive, participatory nature. When Pai organized 15 themed walks across Bangalore, inviting citizens to join him for free 10,000-step journeys, over 1,500 people registered within days. These walks became opportunities for elected representatives, government engineers, and everyday citizens to experience the city's pedestrian infrastructure together, fostering collaboration rather than confrontation.
The results speak volumes: people discovering walkable routes they never knew existed, behavior changes as participants began incorporating walking into daily routines, and even international media attention highlighting Bangalore's potential as "Walkaluru" - a walkable city with universal pedestrian infrastructure. By focusing exclusively on footpaths rather than trying to solve all urban problems at once, Pai demonstrates how targeted, persistent advocacy can create ripples of positive change.
Ready to see your city differently? Follow Arun Pai's example - get out there, walk those footpaths, and turn firsthand experience into expertise that can transform urban spaces for everyone.
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See, all of us are patriotic about our cities. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said that patriotism is basically an irrational love for your own country to be the best in the world. So we all love our cities. So I have that irrational love for Bangalore and I love it when people come here and share that love for the city. But I also felt that, since I'm benefiting, I need to give back. See, when you present something, you have to be a bit clever in how you market it.
Speaker 1:So September 15th was M Vishvesh Vareya's birthday. I'm a huge fanboy. I talk about him at seminars. He is the person who changed us. I talk about him on our walks. He was a walker. He lived until the age of 102. And Vishvesh Vareya had plans on how to make good footpaths. I talk about these things, and Mahatma Gandhi was also a great walker. Dandimarch was I mean I don't know how many of today's endurance athletes can do a Dandimarch actually the number of kilometers and days you walk. So we said we'll start on September 15th last year and by October 2nd that 17 days we'll run 100 kilometers.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Inspire Someone Today podcast, a show where we dive into the stories and insights that has the power to create ripples of inspiration in your life. I'm your host, shrikant, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. Imagine walking through the streets of Bangalore where echoes of the Wadi al-Famili's footsteps still linger on, where colonial era churches whisper stories and where a simple road can transport you through centuries. Today we walk through Bangalore's history with the man who made it an experience. You are walking the footpath, the Bangalore footpath challenge that you have been doing. You're making a tremendous statement out there, just not for the folks in Bangalore, but for the officials concerned, for everybody out there. Just talk us briefly about this and how did this serendipity moment happen and what's your larger message to this particular initiative that you're doing?
Speaker 1:larger message to this particular initiative that you are doing. Okay, so after about five, six years of doing Bangalow walks and that was my future I guess I was late thirties, almost 40. You know, there comes a time when you say, what can I give back? It was a genuine thing and that's probably earlier than most other people. But I got that feeling I've benefited so much from my city. See, all of us are patriotic about our cities. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said that patriotism is basically an irrational love for your own country to be the best in the world. So we all love our cities. So I have that irrational love for Bengal and I love it when people come here and, you know, share that love for the city. But I also felt that, since I'm benefiting, I need to give back. And what I realized when I did my walks and often would be dealing with very senior people.
Speaker 1:I'll give you one example there was a man who went on to become prime minister of Australia and he was foreign minister. He came to the Leela Palace and there was a conference of Pacific Rim countries and I was told he wants to go on a walk and everyone went into a tizzy. You know when can he walk? How can he walk out of Leela Palace? Kodi Halli is so dirty, filthy, which is true and they said he wants to walk. So I was called for a meeting by the Australian High Commissioner and saying what can you do? I said, okay, I'll take up the challenge.
Speaker 1:So you know, sometimes designing a walking tour in Bangalore requires a lot of. It's very challenging because you want to give a good place to walk. You want to not, you know, walk into a garbage dump. You don't want to see some mess, because it's all about perceptions of the country, especially if it's him. So I said listen, I know a place near the Leela Palace, trust me. They didn't trust me. They said do a recce walk. So I go with an entire Australian security apparatus and we walk in Indranagar, behind the Leela Palace, and it has to be incognito. He can't have security people. He wants to walk with his cabinet, and so I find that I'm walking with an Australian foreign minister and his cabinet colleagues, all in normal clothes, like regular. You know Thon Indranagar neighborhood and it's fascinating because a lot of European and overseas ministers want to walk around and see, and so do CEOs. They want to see the real place. But we hide them, we put them in cars, we don't let them walk.
Speaker 1:So that's when it hit me is that Wipro had just gone on the NASDAQ, india was the flavor of the year. We can't keep our city clean and what hurt me was that nobody was taking accountability. So I used to interact with the tourism department and they would say you know, we can't do anything about it, that's the municipality's job. And outside the Vidhan Sawra things would be messy. So I realized I've never worked with government before. But I realized very soon that there was no single owner for the city and there were some people who present the city as a business destination and no control on the quality of the road outside their homes. And the tourism department would go around the world doing road shows. They come to Bangalore. But you know, nandan Nelikani famously wrote his book Imagining India and in the first chapter he says we are showing off our Infosys campus. It's a great campus, the whole world would come to see, but the moment I leave the Infosys campus outside it's not great and I have no power over it.
Speaker 1:So what I realized was that the influencers, the movers and shakers, the people who could do things. You know, azeem Premji famously could not. You know, the Vipro road was terrible for so long. So Bangalore was having a huge infrastructure nightmare in 2005, 2010, when I was doing my walks and I had to answer these questions. So, as somebody representing my city, they would ask me why don't you clean your city? And I would use humor to answer, but at some point it begins to hit you. So when I said I need to do something about this and I began engaging with our government, I started representing the government for diplomatic visits and the model would be let's clear the roads and remove the traffic and take these guys on a bus. But that was not the real India, right? So when I started asking around, I was quite surprised to find that Bangalore is a very unique structure for city governance.
Speaker 1:There is nobody in charge of the street. It didn't work out. So I said and this is where, again, maybe I'm different from most I said let me figure out how to do it, just like my walks. No one had done walks before and I said let me figure out my way of solving this problem of how to engage curious visitors to my city. The same way, I said what does it take to keep one street clean? Simple question. And so I began trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1:I read about behavior psychology. I met a lot of other people who are trying to solve the same problem and I got personally involved with a voluntary organization you might have heard of it called the Ugly Indian, which operates anonymously. But I found that there was a lot of people who had ideas, but no one actually tried things. And so I worked with a few other people who care about Bangalore and said let's take one street and just learn how to manage it better by literally going into their own hands Same lot, our own hands, our own money, our own means quietly, and after a year I learned that the reasons proffered in the media or in analysis or in expert conferences had just diagnosed the problem wrong, because when you diagnose a problem wrong, you solve it wrong. And just like our tourism industry, had not figured out how to appeal to the intelligence of visitors. But my diagnosis is no. Same way.
Speaker 1:I found that governance of Bangalore streets the way to solve it. A lot of people good, well-meaning people who are trying to do it. Their approach was wrong. Their approach was largely the government is bad, the fundamental approach of most social sector of the government, whereas when I went and with my friends we actually got into the system, we discovered it's a very dangerous thing to monolithize the government is bad and the public is good. On the contrary, there are nuanced solutions.
Speaker 1:So I spent a couple of years understanding this. We did a lot of experiments. Wherever I used to go for walk routes, I experimented with those routes because I would be embarrassed by walking on MG Road and find garbage everywhere. I don't know why. And then slowly we were able to eliminate garbage or make things look nice and, you know, it improved my city. So I spent about 15 years being involved with our city again, with a lot of people. We work very quietly, deliberately, and the big aha moment came, I guess, about six or seven months ago, when I discovered unwittingly that walkability is something that matters to everybody, not just me as a tour guide, and I attended some conferences on mobility and I discovered that I mean whether it is from carbon footprint or whether it is from health of the city or whether it is from decongestion or reducing traffic. And what I learned is that if you take a universal problem that everyone has agreed is a problem. There is no trade-off there. It's a problem. And the solution to many of Bangalore's problems is for people to walk. It's a given, there's no debate about it. If we had better footpaths, we'd walk more. If we had better footpaths, we'd have less accidents. So while the entire discussion on traffic was on, that is targeted at the car owner. So just to illustrate you reiterate I don't own a car.
Speaker 1:I don't drive a car. I walk everywhere. I cycle. The famous 15-minute neighborhood is something I practice. I cycle everywhere. I don't have a fancy cycle. I get around. I run a lot. I use the metro and it's not because I'm of a particular ideology, I just find it more convenient.
Speaker 1:And all of your listeners who use public transport when they have the option of using private transport, those who opt for it, are not evolved people. They have actually seen the light is my view. You know once, the people who are often debating we need better public transport are people who have never actually tried to use it beyond the point. Or maybe there's a genuine reason, but I find that those who use it have made not depending or not driving themselves or depending on other people's. Traffic to affect Life is so simple. So I don't have any traffic issues, and in Bangalore, if you don't have traffic issues, you have a lot of time to think about other things, because people seem to talk only about it. You know, I realized that nobody's in charge of Bangalore's footpaths, in my analysis. So to put it simply, the traffic police is in charge of moving vehicles on the road, but there's nobody in charge of moving pedestrians on the footpath. It's not accountable, it's nobody's care. It's just an absence of ownership of pedestrian infrastructure which affects me directly because I walk.
Speaker 1:I'll give an example which really, I think stunned me was maybe about a year ago, a minister from Austria came. So the Austrian minister for economy Okay, he's a marathon runner and he put out a message saying I'm coming to Bangalore for a meeting at 9am with the chief minister of Karnataka, I'm landing at 2.30am and in the morning I want to go for a run. So can you find me? Some runners? And that information filtered through a group which I'm in. I said, of course, I will take you for a run of Bangalore. And so can you believe it? I said, am we have to start at 7 am? So 7 am at the Oberoi, me and two of my running buddies go, an entire Austrian delegation. Okay, minister. And because the minister is running, others have to run. So 10 of them come for a run and we do a 10 kilometer run in Bangalore between 7 and 8.30 am and we go everywhere Halsur Lake, shivaji Nagar like a running tour and 8.30 it's done. He has a shower, he goes for his meeting and we take a video, we share it with them. He posts it on his LinkedIn. It goes across the European diplomatic community.
Speaker 1:Two months later, the Norwegian ambassador from Delhi is a lady. She's also a marathon runner. She says I'm coming to Bangalore, I want to run with you, so I take her on a 10 kilometer run. So suddenly I see that people who come to Bangalore on business say that Bangalore is a wonderful city for running. So we are sitting in Bangalore where people are cribbing about traffic and whatnot, and people from around the world are coming saying guys, you've got great weather, you've got a lovely city. Sometimes you need an outsider to tell you that If I have to conduct a walk or a run for a minister, can you think about the stakes there? So I'm talking to the BBMP, I'm talking to Japanese, but I am saying I don't want any bandobas because they want to get a natural fee. You don't want to block the road.
Speaker 1:So we are sort of taking very important people out high security, very consequential people. One thing goes wrong and it affects them, their country who knows what it affects, right, I don't know, but they're willing to come. So I find myself in the position where, having good networks from the government, to say I'm taking these people, let's ensure the footpaths are good. So I got into this thing. So I remember I met the Joint Commissioner of Police, anuj Chet, who's a wonderful guy, and I told him you have a protocol for moving VIPs on the road. We all know they do right, they can block the roads and move people. I've often been on the bus zipping through Bangalore when the traffic is all blocked and I feel very embarrassed that everybody's made to wait because I'm taking these dignitaries. I said if the VIP wants to walk, do we have a protocol for making the footpath? And he actually said no, there isn't, because I'm not in charge of the footpath. So the traffic police, whose job is to move traffic, has no control on the footpath. So we don't look things holistically in India and in Bangalore there are a lot of these different agencies doing different things.
Speaker 1:So then I realized that on a footpath we did a simple analysis on you take even 50 meters of footpath, there are at least 15 or 20 different agencies that have us take in that footpath. The tree belongs to one department, the electricity box belongs to one department, the telecom guy, the optically fiber cable, the footpath, the drain, the stormwater drain. And I tried to make a map and it is absolutely crazy. The number of people who have a stake in that footpath was something that's important to all of us. We want the OFC, we want all that, but they don't coordinate right. So finally, what happens is if a footpath is not walkable, it is rarely because the footpath was built badly. It's because everyone is doing whatever they like out there, doing whatever they like out there.
Speaker 1:So I began getting into understanding who owns the footpath and since nobody does, I took a brave call. I stuck my neck out. We have something in Bangalore called the bicycle mayor. So when Bangalore wanted to improve its bicycle infrastructure, they appointed a mayor. So I said I will be the footpath mayor of Bangalore. I just went out and said it at a conference and I said it's self-designated, I'm the self-designated mayor of Bangalore until someone else takes my job. Nobody has taken the job in the last four months and I keep asking people.
Speaker 1:Coming back to the beginning of this conversation, I took a call that I will become the footpath mayor, which means I will identify with the Bangalore's footpaths. But I'm not an activist. I'm very clear. I'm with the government because I learned that activism doesn't take only that far. I am a problem solver, since I am the footpath mayor with the permission of all the people who are in charge of the footpath. And so once I stuck my neck out, I said let me do what I know how to do Let me walk and let me run. So I said you have to do something. You get people to look at your issue. When I ask people why don't you walk in Bangalore, they say there are no footpaths. But I walk. I've been walking for 20 years. I know there are footpaths. I've taken ministers on runs, so I know that Bangalore has its bright spots.
Speaker 1:The danger in armchair discussion on any topic in India is we can be extreme. We can say it's all bad or there's no hope. Right, all of us are part of armchair discussion. We say the education system is bad and the corruption is there. I mean, these are all good for dinner conversations, they don't solve it.
Speaker 1:When you actually start solving a problem, you realize that you cannot take on the entire problem. You have to pick a very small aspect of it, like in business. I tell people if you run a for-profit company, nobody wants 100% market share. That's like everybody in the world to have my product. There is no business model that can succeed where the entire population of Bangalore city is your customer. It's just not possible. You will finally decide a target, addressable market, but if you're in the business of providing services, like the government is, everybody's your customer, there is no proven business way to handle that. I mean, it's so different. So those people who come from a for-profit background, who only deal with profitable markets when they are faced with a universal service provision, those rules don't apply. It's such a basic thing that the for-profit skills if you ask me, do not are of no use.
Speaker 1:Literally applied to a public service situation, right, and the only way you can solve something for the public service is you take on the role of the government and say how can I do what the government is doing better? It sounds very simple. But you'll be surprised that not many people approach civic problem solving like that, where you say I'm also part of the government, the government of the people, by the people, for the people. Put yourselves in the shoes of the officer or bureaucrat and say what will you do? And so what I learned was that if I break down Bangalore into small one kilometer footpaths, bangalore has 4,000 kilometers of footpaths or whatever number. But when you break down the problem into one kilometer footpaths and say in this one kilometer footpath there are 15 problems, how do we solve it? This is how an engineer would think Break it down into small things, don't be emotional about it, don't decide who is to blame. How do I solve it? That's it. And when you do that, I discovered something very fascinating half the problems are very easily solved. Since that, nobody has taken a micro. Look at it. But how do you show that? So, since we run anyway, when I say run, you know you run three, four times a week. We run five kilometers, 10 kilometers, sometimes around 15 I always like to run the city to explore it.
Speaker 1:Now, what I also discovered was that running is a very dangerous activity in Bangalore. As you can imagine, there's traffic. So the always advice is run against the traffic. If you're running, run on the right side of the road so you can see the traffic, but that doesn't help you if the guy is going to come and hit you. So for whatever reason and as a driver I also understand that if a person is running against the traffic and coming out of a blind spot, I might just hit that person.
Speaker 1:So I began running on footpaths for my own safety, like and I always do that when I always taught my kids to walk on footpaths, and most people in India just don't walk on footpaths we are very casual with our personal security and the accident rate is the highest of pedestrians, actually, anyway. So once I started running on footpaths, I realized that actually large parts of Bangalore are very good footpaths, but in the sweeping generalizations that we make that everything is bad, we don't know that. So I made it my mission to find good footpaths to run on for my own personal fun, and I then discovered Bangalore as a network of over 100 kilometers of interconnected footpaths, which those who have built the footpaths know the government and the folks in urban planning but nobody uses, which those who have built the footpaths, not the government and the folks in urban planning, but nobody uses. So the idea was that shop the Bangaloreans and say I will find 100 kilometers of footpath and I'm going to run it and I'm going to take a video of everything I do. And I found a lot of my friends willing to run with me. So we took a challenge. We called it the Bangalore footpath challenge. You know how it is If you have a challenge, it gets more interesting. And we did something audacious. See, when you present something, you have to be a bit clever in how you market it.
Speaker 1:So September 15th was Sir M Vishveshwaraya's birthday. I'm a huge fanboy. I talk about him at seminars. I'm a. He is the person who changed us. I talk about him on our walks. He was a walker, he lived until the age of 102 and Vishvesh Parai had plans on how to make good footpaths. I talk about these things and Mahatma Gandhi was also a great walker.
Speaker 1:Dandi march was I mean I don't know how many of today's endurance athletes can do a dandi march actually the number of kilometers and days you walk. So we said we'll start on September 15th last year and by October 2nd that 17 days we'll run 100 kilometers. And we started at Sir MV statue and he said we'll end at Gandhiji statue. It was just a symbolic thing, right? But the idea got a lot of coverage, came in the media, that these guys are running, and what I decided also then was that to cut through the jargon I said we need.
Speaker 1:Now this is a new theory which I will test on you, srikant. You have used Zomato, you have used Ola, you know you see movie ratings, right? What are those ratings is a scale of one to five. So even without going to a restaurant, you can rate it. So if you're the restaurant owner is your friend, you can say five on five, and if he's your, not your, friend, you can say zero on five, right? So why does it work when it is so obvious that a person who's not even been to the restaurant can give a score?
Speaker 1:But the entire system of ratings is what is driving these companies with the billion dollar valuations? Because of ratings, right, and so it's called the wisdom of crowds, where, if a sufficiently large number of people give a rating without any training in how to rate, it apparently is the right answer. So it's not that all the restaurants in Bangalore are good, but some are five and some are four and some are three. It's a relative rating, right? So I found this very fascinating and I thought to myself there is no rating for civic services in India. There is no rating for footpaths, so there's no rating for traffic or anything you want, right? Why? Because it's not a startup economy. There are no VCs trying to measure it, it's the government, right.
Speaker 1:So the thing was we sit and complain about some services, so why not we create a system of rating footpaths? It was a wild idea, but the more I thought about it, I said if we take an idea from the for-profit world, that people understand and apply it to the civic services world. And so I spoke to a few people. They said it's a nice idea to try it. So we said we are going to give a score to every kilometer of footpath in Bangalore and the score will be as simple like a Zomato score. So you walk on a footpath and say one, two, three, four or five. That's it. I don't ask you who you are, I don't ask you your credentials, but you have to walk. I said we'll not allow you to sit at Oman rate. So that's how it started, and we rated 100 kilometers of footpaths.
Speaker 1:We made a map with different colors and I presented it at a conference in October last year which had the who-zoo of the world of mobility, including senior people from government, and everyone said this is brand new. And when I presented this map I said it is my. Take me and 10 other peoples. You can have a different view, please go and walk and change it, but you can't sit at home and do it. So forcing people to actually go on the streets and walk was the idea. Obviously it clicked because it got a lot of media attention. All the experts in the field said good, indian Institute of Science is here in Bangalore. They are experts in traffic management. And professors from there said you're onto something, why don't you come and speak to our people? So suddenly I was getting called to speak in very hallowed locations to experts and all I had done was stuck my neck out, said I'm footpath mayor and run 100 kilometers. That's it, nothing more right. So zero experience, zero credential. So it is just like my walks field.
Speaker 1:I discovered that if you approach a new problem, it has to be a problem and you approach it fresh. Just take your neck out. Don't take anybody's help, advice or money. Try to put out something that makes sense and if there is traction, people will listen to you. So that happened.
Speaker 1:I'm doing something that has not been done anywhere else in India. That's always nice, right? First one in the world. Nowhere in the world have footpaths rated Nowhere. So that excites me that I'm looking around the world and saying which city has rated its footpaths? They don't. So walkability is a phrase that is used a lot in urban planning, but it's a qualitative term, you know, based on surveying people. It is not an absolute metric. It's like Zomato again, right, if you're a vegetarian and I'm a meat eater, obviously our ratings are going to be different for the same restaurant, but the Zomato rating doesn't change that. You may say four, I may say four, okay. So same way in footpaths, I discovered that one person's good footpath is another person's bad footpath. One person gets troubled by a few. Fine, I'll get on with life. So if you survey 10 people and make them walk, they have very different views on a path, if it's a qualitative feedback. But if you just give them a scale three to four, five you'll find that they all converge on something it's.
Speaker 1:I did this experiment. I actually did it Just at my walks I asked a lot of people so I said this is we're onto something interesting here. We are disrupting the, the way that people approach the diagnosis of civic problems. It's all about diagnosis. If you diagnose right, you likely solve it. It sounds like rapid science but it's not. So again we said what do we do? That's dramatic. Now I said so.
Speaker 1:This is where I find that three of my passions have come to them. Okay, after 20 years they were operating. I used to run as a personal passion. I just love running on the streets and that helps me discover. But it's also a bit of personal fitness health I like. For those who run will understand what I say. It's an addictive thing. It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't run what the joy is in getting up early and running 10 kilometers on the streets, but those who get it get it. So these are all special interests where if you are part of it, you appreciate it. You don't try to explain to others.
Speaker 1:Second thing is that I'm doing walks because it's my profession. And the third thing is I want to improve my city. I do not like it when people I feel very strongly about my city All of us do. But I want to make change and it is frustrating if you can't. And so I found something where I can convert. I can use my passion to actually make change, which is what the ultimate aim is.
Speaker 1:So I put them all together as recently as December we're not sitting in March. First week In December I said let me do something absolutely crazy. I will have hundreds of people walk 100 kilometers. I will conduct 15 walks over 15 days Every day. I will ask people to come with me. I will show you seven to eight kilometers of footpath to walk on. That's 10,000 steps basically. So I realized that a lot of people want to get that 10,000 steps every day and very few of those people get that 10,000 steps on the footpaths. They get into the gym in the park, going round and round in their apartment complex. People drive to the gym and I'm saying, hello, why can't we just walk on the footpaths? And they, I said there are no footpaths. So the whole point was break Bangalore into 5000 step, that is, three kilometer sections.
Speaker 1:I sat with google maps and we mapped out the entire sort of important parts of Bangalore. People commute the metro lines or outer ring road and I said every day. I'm going to walk now because I'm a tour guide, I'll make it interesting. So I created 15 themed walks of the city military, bang, bangalore, aerospace Bangalore, beautiful Baswangudi. But I said, if you come with me, I will guarantee you 10,000 steps on the footpath, I'll give you some good stories and it's entirely free. And so when the Bangalore Hubba happened in December 1st fortnight, I said to coincide with that, I'll offer 15 free walks. And this is interesting.
Speaker 1:Again, I used my learnings. How do you okay, it's a crazy idea how do you spread it? I simply made one poster. It was a calendar December 1 to 15. Every day, a different starting point, always at a metro station. Come free. Anyone open to know just reply to this form, no resident required. And I put it on a couple of WhatsApp groups. We had 1,500 registrations in a few days. Whatsapp groups we had 1500 registrations in a few days. I mean, it was unbelievable. Unbelievable that 1500 people were willing to come and walk early morning and I thought, if I get 40, 50, it's okay. I was getting 500 people registering for each walk. And how am I going to handle it? And that's great, because I'm stress testing myself. So now I'm saying so I've done the marketing. People are coming. I did this marketing two weeks before, so we have two weeks to figure it out.
Speaker 1:I go to the government I work a lot with the BBMP and the Metro and the traffic police because they know what I do and I said this is what's going to happen. We're going to get people walking on the footpaths. Why don't we do something about it? And it's always so. India is like we love events. We are very good at cleaning up our house for a function. We're very good at cleaning up a street for an event, right.
Speaker 1:What I learned was that if you create events, everybody gets together to make it work because there's a deadline. So if December 2nd I'm coming to walk on Surinam Das Road and I've got 15 days left, there is only one or two officers in charge of that road. So I go and meet them and say I'm coming with 100 people, I want you to walk with me. And interestingly, they said they will come Because everybody walks Senior officers, government bureaucrats, mlas everybody walks. It's a universally desired activity and when you say I'm going to walk with a lot of people, they say I'll come along with you.
Speaker 1:So in fact, on the first day we launched it. We launched it in Shantinagar. We had the MLA of Shantinagar, na Harris. He came and walked 10 kilometers with us. Kilometers does it was surprising to me, in the rain it was raining the MLA of the area comes, he walks, he tells people, tell me the problems you know.
Speaker 1:So what I also discovered was that when you create a very simple product where all it does is come and walk and I will tell you stories and it's free, there's not a good reason to say no, because if you say no, the people are not interested. And if you want to solve my city's problems, come and vote for it by coming and walking right. So what I realized is, if you make it, those who really want to make change have to be willing to come out in the morning and give their time. It's a very basic thing. I found it in my walks too. The people who came for walks, people who cared about the city, who wanted to learn about it, they would put themselves into some trouble. Similarly, I said if you're willing to come at 7am and walk for three, four hours, I respect you and the kind of people who came. I was shocked. We had lots of senior citizens. We had people from all over the city who would come by metro, traveling an hour, just to be in time to walk with me, and the news spread. And so, by the time we reached the last day in Jainagar, we had 220 people who showed up to walk in Jainagar. We took 220 people on footpaths in Jainagar, right, ultimate stress test.
Speaker 1:So what began as a wild idea in mid-November was actually executed in the first half of December. We now have a WhatsApp group of some thousand 500 people, who I didn't know from scratch 30 days ago who are all people who are willing to come and walk anywhere, at any distance. But what is the quid pro quo here? They get a great experience, of course. I give them good effort. They I give them a good effort. They rate the footpaths so at the end of each thing.
Speaker 1:So we have created a very democratic way of rating footpaths with actual numbers of people, with data we all love big data, right. So we actually have someone recording everyone walking. We put it up somewhere on a website. There are videos, so now there is no controversy. So Ranjan Das Road has 14 problems, that's it. We don't say good or bad, and what happens is when you measure correctly and you co-opt the system in a positive way, they also want to do well. So we have this incredible situation where we have elected representatives walking with us, ias officers walking with us, ward engineers walking with us and saying, sir, next week, if you're coming to my place, I'll improve it for you. All we are doing is taking genuine people out to walk. We don't carry placards, we don't say we want better footpaths, no, we're just walking. So that experiment worked so well. I mean, today we're sitting.
Speaker 1:In March there was pressure on me to create a, you know, a good walk every two weeks. So we had to come up with ideas. So on 21st December we said we'd do the world's first 21 kilometer walk and 50 people showed up and walked 21 kilometers, and most have not done it. On January 26th they walked 26 kilometers. And these are regular people, it's not athletes. So you know what everyone says at the end I didn't know that Bangalore was walkable.
Speaker 1:So when you are trying to change perceptions, behavior change. A lot of it is getting people to experience it. People have a lot of preconceived ideas. So we are slowly reaching a point where people are willing to say, okay, maybe there are footpaths, but you have to come and walk If willing to say okay, maybe there are footpaths, but you have to come and walk. If you sit and complain at home, I'll not listen to you, right? So this morning what was very interesting was, because it's the women's month, I said fine, we'll do a walk only for women, but we'll do a run. So today was a five kilometer only on footpaths, and 90 women showed up this morning. Most of them had never walked more than two kilometers in their life.
Speaker 1:So, coming back to the theme of your, you know your podcast Inspire Someone Today, what I learned in this last two months was that if you get people out and they do more than they've ever done before without realizing it, it's hugely personally satisfying. I get so many thank yous saying I've never walked more than five and you showed me how to walk 10 in my own city and the kind of feedback I'm getting is fascinating. I know people who say now I used to drive everywhere for meetings, now I park my car and I walk the last two kilometers and they do it because they genuinely understand Everyone picks up something that's valuable. Another guy, a very good friend of mine. He says my kids tell me not to run on the roads because it's dangerous Because of you. Now I run on footpaths. Because I run on footpaths, I don't have to worry about traffic. Listen to. So when you do something that appeals in different ways to people, people take different things from it. It's very nice. I'm getting a lot of gratitude for showing the way. That's it, nothing more right. So it's a bit like I think I have seen the light that there are footpaths. Now what happens when there are no footpaths? Enough people? So it's very interesting.
Speaker 1:Now I've, in the last week, I've had two speaking assignments on very prestigious platforms in a field I was never an expert. In the Deccan Herald Bangalore 2040 Summit, which is like a futuristic vision summit, which got opened by the chief minister and the who's. Who was speaking, I was put on a panel. Why? Because I'm the walking guy. So, in other words, I have become the voice of the pedestrian, pedestrian mayor, footpath mayor, whatever.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, whenever any debate happens on decongestion, traffic in Bangalore, everyone has to talk only about the roads and you will say, okay, is it car, is it tunnel, is it flyover, is it cycle? And my point is you're all fighting over the same road, whereas the footpath no one is fighting over Let me take it, it's with some buyers. Even if it's a store, it's a shop. Encroachment is finally an object. It is much easier to deal with an object than another human. So the trade-offs involved in mobility. So it's very odd that no one had ever made pedestrians and footpaths their focus. It was always an afterthought, even in the folks who did mobility, it was always about a better, best service. So I came up with this acronym, unfortunately. So I came up with this acronym, unfortunately, to come up with simple. It's called WTF, which I cannot use in polite.
Speaker 1:The context is beyond a point Weather, trees and footpaths the three elements that are required for walkability. Good weather, we have it. Bangalore, 100 kilometers all are in the shade. In my last walk, 26 kilometers a guy from Hyderabad said I walked 26 kilometers in Bangalore. He says I could never do this in Hyderabad. You know the footpaths are brilliant, it's so hot. So what we realized is we are so fortunate to have tree-lined avenues, so we have weather, we have trees. If we fix our footpaths, bangalore will be awkward. So I came up with a new brand name last week. It is called Walkal. We are a walkaloo, come and see it.
Speaker 1:So at the Deccan Herald Summit, my co-panelist was the chief commissioner of VBMP, dushar Gignath. So I mean, I was put in that pedestal of sorts where I'm discussing the future of Bangalore's footpaths with the commissioner who was entirely in charge of doing it. I know him well. We have worked together for many years. There is a lot of mutual respect, so that, because you know, I'm not sitting there and saying do this, do that, we are doing it together.
Speaker 1:And so at this conference I come up with two new buzzwords which hit the news the next day. I'm very proud of them. The first buzzword was the second buzzword was and. So G means garbage, s means shop, like a shop is an obstacle on my footpath, and T means a trench I can fall into it. So I said on a footpath, the three obstacles I have.
Speaker 1:The second acronym I came up with was OFF, obstacle-free footpaths. That term does not exist in mobility. We have signal-free corridors for roads. So I said if we want obstacle-free footpaths, if we want OFF. So I defined a mission. We want obstacle-free footpaths if we want OFF. So I defined a mission. We want obstacle-free footpaths, the mission exists.
Speaker 1:We have to give a GST score for each footpath, how many garbage spots, how many shocks, how many trenches, that's all. So if the GST score is 5, that's 5. And we measured, we would actually go and measure GST score and all that. And then we discover that the T is very simple. To solve the trench you have to put one footpath slab. There is an engineering department in charge of it. It is not so. Similarly, g is in charge of somebody else, s is somebody else. So once you start breaking down the problem in a very measurable score, in a fun way like GST, it becomes easier to solve. So the other thing I do a lot of in Bangalore, I'll let me show off a bit now.
Speaker 1:In 2005, thomas Friedman comes to Bangalore and is taken up by a day in Bangalore and famously writes the book the World is Flat after a day in Bangalore. And that book it was written the same year in which I began Bangalore Walks. Thiler Palace was a new hotel. I read that book and you know, famously in the book he asked the question why did Bangalore boom? And I met him and I told him his answer was wrong. I'll tell you the story if you come on my walk, that your story is inadequate. So for me, thomas Friedman is an important part of my storytelling.
Speaker 1:What I discovered much later was that in 2007 or 2008, in the New York Public Library, when Nandan Nelikani is launching his book, nandan and Tom are in discussion in 2008, in New York Public Library, and after they discussed the book, a person in the audience asked Tom, tom, if I come to India, can I see the India that you saw, which inspired you to write the book, how you played golf one morning, how you met some smart people, you know, like somebody asked the question. And Tom says I'm not sure. And Nandan says publicly Tom, there's a guy in Bangalore called Arun Pai. Who says publicly Tom is a guy in Bangalore called Arun Pai who does precisely that. He takes people and shows them the golf course that inspired you. And Tom says I didn't know that. He said he should go and go on his walk. So I have Nandan Nilikani publicly endorsing what I do in New York Public Library. I didn't know it. On a random Google search more five years back, I found this talk. So, yeah, I mean it stunned me too, right, I didn't know Then. I now I interact a lot with Nandan.
Speaker 1:I brought this up because this entire UPI story when India hosted the G20, a very important part of the G20 was the digital public infrastructure and because of that, it's astonishing to me the number of people from around the world who come to Bangalore to understand how to implement DPI in their countries. And they all come to Bangalore. I often say they come to Koramangala and they meet with all the architects of India's DPI and I often take those people on walks. So I'm in a situation now I'm taking a morning walk for the technology minister of some country who basically come to understand DPI. So I find myself in a situation where I'm explaining DPI on the streets. So my city tour also involves you DPI on the streets. So my city tour also involves, you know, going to shops using QR codes explaining how DPI works the real thing. So I do a lot of such things where I use my walk to explain a business process. I deal with a lot of clients where, if they're in retail, I go to the market not to show them the colors in the market, to explain the margins. So a lot of my experiences are linked to business interests. So I found for the last six months I've been doing explaining UPI, dpi, to people who never heard these terms before. So I come up with simple stories.
Speaker 1:I actually do speak in conferences on India's digital story from a non-technical point of view, and that's when it hit me that why not a good acronym for what I do? So I said UPI Universal Pedestrian Infrastructure. So I said UPI Universal Pedestrian Infrastructure. So I presented this term, that UPI in India. If you ask people what UPI stands for, most people don't know Expansion, unified Payments Interface. Most people will say United or Universal. Upi is across languages, right, everybody mean it's just so quickly we adopted it.
Speaker 1:I often go to markets where the grandma is sitting selling flowers who doesn't speak any language. The customer speaks. She doesn't have a phone, but she knows UPI, right. So I said universal pedestrian infrastructure is what is lacking in our city. And by calling it that, I just did it for fun, but it's a very powerful phrase because UPI and digital has had huge multiplier effects. Right, we didn't realize that if we provide universal digital payments, the economy would boom. So I make this phrase, I do these walks, and then can you guess who reports about it? Mint from Bombay this is a financial newspaper says somebody in Bangalore is walking 100 kilometers is good for India's economy, because when Indians walk and improve the potential infrastructure, the economy improves.
Speaker 1:So I come back to my first thing, the Dravid example that if we just stick to doing a simple thing well, other people find meaning in it. Don't try to be everything to everybody. So just by being a person who said I care about footpaths, I don't know about anything else, I don't care about the road, I don't care about traffic, I am very focused. I don't care about traffic, I am very focused, I want better footpaths and that's all I will do. And within two months I have realized that I actually have expertise from actual experience. I have walked a hundred kilometers. If somebody has walked those a hundred kilometers, I'm willing to argue with them about it. But if someone has not walked, I will not accept their argument because it's not based on facts, it's not based on data.
Speaker 1:So when you take a position that I'm going to do something, I'm going to sample it, I'm going to measure it and then I will acquire expertise. Not many people do that. So in a very short time, in three months now I'm sitting and talking and I've stuck my neck out because I realized that someone has to do it. Someone has to be the voice of the affected party, in this case the pedestrian. But I'm taking it in a positive way and saying I'm going to look around Bangalore for the best footpaths. See, if I'm a food person, I go to the best restaurants. I often make the point food critics are they going to the worst restaurants to rate them? No right, they're only going to the good ones. So, services, let me find the bright spots in Bangalore.
Speaker 1:I get a lot of criticism. When you stick your neck out, you're going to get trolled, you're going to get criticized. I know a lot of people under their breath are saying this guy doesn't know anything because I say good things about the city and it doesn't work for people who want not to look for good things. It's like saying why? And I say but we do it everywhere. We look for good movies, we look for good restaurants. So I am looking for good footpaths and if it's good, let's say it's good, if it's bad, it's bad. It's such a simple thing. But we'll be surprised. It's not a popular approach to solving civic problems. So, in the quest for footpaths, we're defining which is Bangalore's best footpath, widest footpath, and we're actually photographing it. So we are creating this map which is user-driven, which will soon go public public and we'll present the Waka Luru map and so it's very interesting, it's very heady and as it, this morning some women came to me and said you've shown me that our city, we can run in it, and you've shown me that a pedestrian is a safe space for women. It has taken on a larger meaning the ability to occupy a public space, like a walks and runs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I was not in anyone's conception. So yeah, I mentioned Mint. Bbc called me from Bombay. Quite interesting. Once you get into the media people call you right and I, of course, fight for Bangalore. So when the BBC journalist called me, I said what's the distance from Nariman Point to Worli? He said I don't know. I said it's six kilometers. I said have you walked it? No, then how do you know where the footpaths are? I said I have walked 500 kilometers so slowly. When you start positioning the city against other cities, which I want to do, I'm hoping there are other people in other cities who say let's also try this. So in the walks I didn't try to create a replicable model because it was a business. Here I'm trying solve a civic problem. Hopefully others will replicate. So now we're trying to create a replicable, easy to create model to solve one civic problem. So yeah, my three passions of running, walking and a better city have kind of come together, couldn't have been a better summation of all of it than this.
Speaker 2:This has been one heck of a conversation, starting with passion, history, pride to making an impact to the city and the community. Hats off to what you have done, what you have kind of shown as a template to a lot of people that one can lead to another if that mission is there, if that mission is consistent and you continue to believe in that story. I can't ask for anything more than what you have shared with all of our listeners Before we sign off. This show is all about creating ripples of inspiration. If there's one message that Arun Pai would want to share with all the listeners, what would that one message?
Speaker 1:be. I think the message would be one is believe in yourself, be optimistic, be humble, always understand that the problem that you're trying to address is much larger than you and that you have to learn constantly how to solve it and listen to users, listen to the environment. So I think humility is something I find very important. Never trivialize a problem that I know how to solve it. It's always that I will learn how to solve it and so, being constantly learning, even today, after 20 years of doing walks, I work hard at every walk. I prepare for every talk. I take feedback from everyone.
Speaker 1:I'm not arrogant about the fact that I've done it for so long. I know what to do. So humility, self-confidence, optimism and believing that the world will be good to you if you do things, if you're ethical, ethics are very important to me. Ethics in business, ethics in what you do. Be true to your craft. I important to me. Ethics in business, ethics in what you do, be true to your craft. I mean, if you believe in karma, that if you are honest and you are true to your craft, the world will smile on you. I believe that anything that I have achieved is because I have been very ethical and true to what I do, honest with who I work with. So those are what. That's what keeps me going.
Speaker 2:Wonderful, those are some great inputs, great insights. So, my dear listeners, wonderful, those are some great inputs, great insights. So, my dear listeners, this is just not a story about a guy who took the fellow citizens on a walk in the streets of Bangalore. This is a guy who is making changes to what the city can be, giving us a template to the world what cities can be across the world. Arun can't thank you enough for giving us this masterclass of sorts, which covers various aspects of everything that we want to do, wishing you good luck in your endeavors and more power to your mission. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and sharing those wonderful, wonderful stories with me and my listeners.
Speaker 1:If I inspired someone today, one person, I'm happy. That's all I want, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
