From the eyes of an 'outsider'!

I belong to 'Jamshedpur' from Jharkhand. So for many years, I always thought Maharashtra had only two major cities: “Pune & Mumbai”!

Oddly enough, I started looking for a new job and got to know about Roadbounce project in Maharashtra state. During interview I came to know that the very first  criteria is to travel continuously. Well, guess what! I love travelling!! so i decided to appear for interview and got selected for the same.

Since I am not well-versed with 'Marathi', the native language of Maharashtra state, I was quite shy and reserved while starting up.. but all my concerns got faded away very soon as I traveled through this land of saints and warriors..

Mrityunjay Pandey - Field Team

​After joining RoadBounce I got the opportunity to travel to various regions of Maharashtra like Konkan, Pune, Marathwada & few part of Vidarbha while travelling i observed ground level reality, prosperity & heritage of Shivaji Maharaj's empire Maharashtra. From variation in Marathi pronunciation to food specialty, landscape, farms & fertility, people's mentality and lot more cultural influences I observed during this journey. 

Oh.. the food!

​When I was in Sangli I travelled across grape farms & ate lots of grapes, In Solapur became addict of “Shengachatni”& visited Vitthal temple at Pandharpur, In Yavatmal tasted street tasted food Pithla bhakar, In Kolhapur visited Mahalaxmi temple. In Kolhapur, food  called “Tambda Pandhra Rassa” is quite famous, but sadly I could not taste it as I am a pure vegetarian. In Konkan visited most of the beaches and experienced  nature’s beauty. Also visited many religious places such as “Aai Tuljabhawani mandir” in Osmanabad and Gurudwara in Nanded. and In Aurangabad lots of Historical places. I have enjoyed all things, from greenary of Konkan to drought of Latur & Vidarbh. 

​I was on duty and scanning State highways and District roads, and I got the chance to understand the reality behind the road construction and legal and administrative boundaries for officials responsible for maintaining roads. Everything was crystal clear from people's urgent needs for good roads to officer's limitations and Government's fund limitations. Each and everything we observed partly answered for the question "why we are lacking in the quality of roads compare to other countries?". 

Limitations of age-old paper based records

it was very interesting and inspiring to know that at many places, the actual road start and end points were not verified in year! Some roads were present on record but did not exist on ground. This kind of reality exists everywhere, every part of India, and can be mainly attributed to age old practice of paper-based record keeping. So what we need is digitization of all data related to the road including geo-tagging every milestone!

RoadBounce is all about digitizing road’s data & as I think there are lots of barrier in our path of service of digitizing road data for more accuracy & transparency, because we stand for change and while doing this we have to face some challenges as well. But we will support the change and will be the change for the better future of Indian roads.