Indian streets hurt people. Help us find out who is held accountable.
A pothole. An open drain. A falling tree, a collapsed hoarding, a snapped live wire, an unguarded metro work site. Across Indian cities, people are injured or killed every year because public infrastructure failed them.
After each such incident, news reports often say an FIR was filed, an official was suspended or compensation was announced. After that, the story usually goes quiet. Did the case reach court? Was anyone found responsible? Did the family get the money they were promised?
Citizen Matters is starting a research project to answer these questions. We are looking for volunteers to help.
What you'll do
- Track down cases from 2020 to 2026 where someone was injured or killed because public infrastructure failed
- Check each one and log it in a shared spreadsheet.
- Work in a small team, each covering a set of years or cities.
- BONUS: Be part of an exercise to follow up on selected cases using the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
What you'll gain
- A workshop on how to draft and file RTI applications.
- Hands-on experience with civic research. You can use these skills on other issues in your neighbourhood, like water, lakes or roads.
- Like-minded community of citizens
- Certificate of participation acknowledging your effort.
- Credit in the published report.
Who can join
Anyone who cares about safer streets and can give upto 5 hours per week from October 10th to October 20th. You don't need any prior experience. You need to be comfortable reading news online and using Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets. Knowing Kannada, Tamil, Marathi or other regional languages is a big plus.
Deadline: October 8th.