Indeed Arvind, these are great initiatives! Although, to be honest, I for one remain of two minds.

While it does point to a sense of control that the citizenry is seizing, no doubt, it does, as you’ve observed already, point to a breakdown of public policy to some degree. Ideally, the citizenry should be freed up of taking responsibility for matters (like traffic signals) that clearly should be the job of public officials and the government.

Not that citizens shouldn’t do it (especially if officials aren’t!), but more because the citizens should be free to focus on other matters — like bettering commerce, which ultimately betters (hopefully!) tax collections, which allow civic officials to better do their jobs.

Maybe this is pointing to Gandhiji’s mantra of highly distributed and localized governance? …