"Could the people running the Chennai rain relief operations on the ground and the net please run the whole country. It would be amazing." - Samit Basu
I cannot but smile in agreement to the spirit in which this statement has been made.
Last week when the first bout of flooding started, friends in Chennai kept in touch over Whatsapp and Facebook. They said they were safe, power had been cut off as a precaution and sent pictures of boats plying in affected areas offering help and checking if people wanted to be ferried out.
We are accustomed to blame the system and the government in times like this, but I was pleasantly surprised to find people from Chennai on my Twitter feed reported the opposite.
Public transport was spot on, in areas that were not directly affected. Auto rickshaws were plying and in many cases, without accepting payments. Traffic policemen, firemen and rescue teams worked overtime, clearing incident after incident, with concern and urgency. Ola came to the party with boats too, but it was quite clear by then that the public transport and system machinery were standing out as the real heroes. People in unaffected areas opened up their houses; hotels lowered their rates and offers to share food, power and phones started popping up on social media.
Towards the end of the week, I could see a really humane side emerging and standing stoically to withstand nature's fury.
A different solution was starting to appear. Mind you, the "national media" had not yet picked this story up but Twitter instead was offering field based information. Local volunteers checked and provided real time updates on Twitter. Some people like @krishashok were extremely active and posting out verified information, which I'm sure was reassuring for people like me who were outside the country but had friends and family in the city. @krishashok even compiled an end-of-day summary update for NRIs.
Over the last 2-3 days, the scale of socially arranged relief has been astonishing. @krishashok and his team scoured area after area, putting up regular status updates, checking Twitter feeds and matching up donors and the needy. @actor_siddharth and @rj_balaji set up base camp at Big FM and patrolled areas with convoys of cars. The teams pleaded on Twitter for help - cars, food, blankets, medicines, money, volunteers - but never stopped working with what they had in hand.
The NRDF, Navy and the Army have arrived and started to work in tandem with the volunteers. Relief work is now fully underway with state and centre both engaged. But this army of local volunteers have been beyond belief. They have found ways to deal with the amount of data being thrown at them. When it became too much for an individual, they brought in hashtags. When the hashtags became unreliable, they put up a website. As I type, the website now has various categories and offers the facility to add information, and is updated every 5 minutes.
So, you see, I agree with the spirit in which this statement is made.
Thoughts
When I think of the motivation of these volunteers to wade in the water and help, I draw parallels to Dan Pink's theory of what motivates us. This motley army of volunteers was motivated by the triumvirate of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.
Autonomy: the guys who put the site up had one objective - to get the site up. They were not constrained by design decisions, technology choices or performance requirements. Their objective of getting the site up and running was backed by a complete autonomy on the choice of tools and technologies they wanted to use.
Mastery: volunteers were asked to stick to the areas they know well and not venture into the far away areas. This helped in two ways. One, local knowledge was always in the area. Two, it prevented the need for a backup team to find the volunteers who ventured out too far. Mastery also in the way the Army and the NDRF worked - they had superior experience in such operations and their supply chains were more robust than volunteers. It made sense that professionals went to the worst affected areas.
Purpose: this is the most important of them all. Every single volunteer did what (s)he did, not because of money or fame, but to help each other in crisis and restore the faith in humanity. They did it with a sense of brotherhood and collective responsibility.
I will end with a tweet from @srini091, one of India's elite marathon runners, based in Chennai, and whom I follow on Twitter - "God? Their places of worship have been flooded! We just have to help each other. You are my God. I'm yours & so on"
Disclaimer
I am not in Chennai, and all information I have referred to are from my friends who are safe in Chennai, and from my Twitter and Facebook feeds, where I follow @krishashok, @srini091, @actor_siddharth among others. This is my view of things, like how I saw it on my social media feed. There are many others who were directly involved on the ground and have many such stories to tell. We owe it to them to get those stories out.
I cannot but smile in agreement to the spirit in which this statement has been made.
Last week when the first bout of flooding started, friends in Chennai kept in touch over Whatsapp and Facebook. They said they were safe, power had been cut off as a precaution and sent pictures of boats plying in affected areas offering help and checking if people wanted to be ferried out.
We are accustomed to blame the system and the government in times like this, but I was pleasantly surprised to find people from Chennai on my Twitter feed reported the opposite.
Public transport was spot on, in areas that were not directly affected. Auto rickshaws were plying and in many cases, without accepting payments. Traffic policemen, firemen and rescue teams worked overtime, clearing incident after incident, with concern and urgency. Ola came to the party with boats too, but it was quite clear by then that the public transport and system machinery were standing out as the real heroes. People in unaffected areas opened up their houses; hotels lowered their rates and offers to share food, power and phones started popping up on social media.
Towards the end of the week, I could see a really humane side emerging and standing stoically to withstand nature's fury.
A different solution was starting to appear. Mind you, the "national media" had not yet picked this story up but Twitter instead was offering field based information. Local volunteers checked and provided real time updates on Twitter. Some people like @krishashok were extremely active and posting out verified information, which I'm sure was reassuring for people like me who were outside the country but had friends and family in the city. @krishashok even compiled an end-of-day summary update for NRIs.
Over the last 2-3 days, the scale of socially arranged relief has been astonishing. @krishashok and his team scoured area after area, putting up regular status updates, checking Twitter feeds and matching up donors and the needy. @actor_siddharth and @rj_balaji set up base camp at Big FM and patrolled areas with convoys of cars. The teams pleaded on Twitter for help - cars, food, blankets, medicines, money, volunteers - but never stopped working with what they had in hand.
The NRDF, Navy and the Army have arrived and started to work in tandem with the volunteers. Relief work is now fully underway with state and centre both engaged. But this army of local volunteers have been beyond belief. They have found ways to deal with the amount of data being thrown at them. When it became too much for an individual, they brought in hashtags. When the hashtags became unreliable, they put up a website. As I type, the website now has various categories and offers the facility to add information, and is updated every 5 minutes.
So, you see, I agree with the spirit in which this statement is made.
Thoughts
When I think of the motivation of these volunteers to wade in the water and help, I draw parallels to Dan Pink's theory of what motivates us. This motley army of volunteers was motivated by the triumvirate of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.
Autonomy: the guys who put the site up had one objective - to get the site up. They were not constrained by design decisions, technology choices or performance requirements. Their objective of getting the site up and running was backed by a complete autonomy on the choice of tools and technologies they wanted to use.
Mastery: volunteers were asked to stick to the areas they know well and not venture into the far away areas. This helped in two ways. One, local knowledge was always in the area. Two, it prevented the need for a backup team to find the volunteers who ventured out too far. Mastery also in the way the Army and the NDRF worked - they had superior experience in such operations and their supply chains were more robust than volunteers. It made sense that professionals went to the worst affected areas.
Purpose: this is the most important of them all. Every single volunteer did what (s)he did, not because of money or fame, but to help each other in crisis and restore the faith in humanity. They did it with a sense of brotherhood and collective responsibility.
I will end with a tweet from @srini091, one of India's elite marathon runners, based in Chennai, and whom I follow on Twitter - "God? Their places of worship have been flooded! We just have to help each other. You are my God. I'm yours & so on"
Disclaimer
I am not in Chennai, and all information I have referred to are from my friends who are safe in Chennai, and from my Twitter and Facebook feeds, where I follow @krishashok, @srini091, @actor_siddharth among others. This is my view of things, like how I saw it on my social media feed. There are many others who were directly involved on the ground and have many such stories to tell. We owe it to them to get those stories out.
