Three students, all pursuing a Fellowship at NIMHANS (National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences), all with a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology, all with a variety of interesting internship and work experiences, came by to delve in and learn about a practical application of positive psychology and how it is implemented for better outcomes in mental health. The small group enabled engaging discussions and spurred many potential ideas for campaigns such as music at traffic signals stops to calm and encourage stopping and better signage to encourage people to take the underpass to cross the roads outside their current place of residence and study – NIMHANS.
This is the report of Jigyasa Tandon, one of the Fellowship students:
REFLECTION ON 2 DAY INTERACTIVE PROGRAMME WITH MRS. ANUSHA JAISHANKAR, FOUNDER, POSITIVE STROKES – ENCOURAGING GOOD ROAD BEHAVIOUR
Sitting within a closed room, I still remember, as a 4th grader being taught about various means of transport, basic geographical roads and road safety and mannerisms within the contextual knowledge of India. Moreover, to support the same, there was a series of workshops with traffic policemen and controllers coming in and giving us information about the dos and don’ts on the road and how to ensure safety on roads. But, with development in age and course of study, this knowledge became a fragile memory stored somewhere at the back of the mind. Now, being all grown up , dealing with adult pursuits in life, I often question, learning we undergo through school times and in general. As, while attending to practical life, situations gives us an insight to an altogether a differed surface of interaction and performance. Taking in specific case of road safety and mannerisms, we all have, at some point of time undergone, training and understanding the same wherein we understand the dos and don’ts on road, dealing with emergency and traffic. Also, given a discussion on such topics, we literally scream out points of difference of driving and road structure /rules between western countries and India, giving value suggestions of how the whole thing can improve. But, it all fails or comes to a standstill when we face the actualities and do exactly what we stand against for. This could include a variety of behaviours, such as bribing the policemen, jumping red-light, not giving way to ambulance, not maintaining the righteous space for pedestrians, not maintaining the traffic, not wearing helmets or seat belts, talking on phone while driving etc.
The point of discussion here is not objectifying people with blames and mistakes, but understanding the whys and initiate a thinking to curb the same to an extent that the harm it causes reduces to level that road harmony could be achieved. Herein, I would indeed, take this as a platform to appreciate the efforts extended by Mrs Anusha Jaishankar, an engineer by profession, who spent a good period of her life in the US, came back to India, changed her line of work to run a programme, Positive Strokes- Encouraging Good Road Behaviour, ensuring safety on road after observing the grave situation of the drivers, traffic authorities and the possible consequences that were happening because of it. Recently, having been blessed with an opportunity to meet her for a 2 day programme, helped us, fellows in Mental health Education, NIMHANS, to understand how she had beautifully applied the principles of behaviour therapy in bringing a change in people’s attitude towards road safety. Using the laws of positive reinforcement, explained by Skinner and Thorndike in their theories of behaviourism and enacted upon by Ward Clapham in Canada as a programme ‘Positive Ticketing’, she tied up with Traffic Authorities in Karnataka, to reward people(especially young adults) who maintained good traffic behaviour. This was done with an intention to reinforce good behaviour to increase the occurrence of good and desired behaviour among people on road. For the same, she designed a well-planned structure and fancy rewards making it an attractive process to welcome change. The structure involved, conditions, dos and don’ts, who to reward, time duration of observation of behaviour before rewarding, etc. The idea, as she explained, was to reward consistent behaviour and not random behaviour to achieve better results from the application of the programme. Moreover, she provided opportunities for people, those would be interested and were likely to volunteer for programmes to implement and foresee the success of the same. The effectiveness of the programme increased when traffic authorities too extended a helpful hand for the same in a way appreciating a common man’s appeal to bring a change in something that was source of death for about 12% of total Indian population.
During the 2 day programme, we sourced a lot of information about the world stats, indian stats about road safety, force in action, deaths and accidents and initiatives to curb the same. Further, the rationale of the programme she has introduced, it’s current impact, feedback of people as a volunteer and a recipient of the same. Moreover, a visit to Traffic Management Centre, and observing the workings of traffic controllers followed by subsequent hands on experience of using the technology for maintaining and observing traffic gave us a lot of reflection and led to developing a sense of becoming responsible citizens of the city on the road.
In nutshell, understanding the underlying reasons of occurrence of a particular behaviour supported by ample amount of information /knowledge of psychology can actually help an individual seek major changes in attitude formation of people in a common /community set up could be procured from the presented condition.
-By Jigyasa Tandon (Fellowship Student, NIMHANS; Aug 22, 2018)
Positive Strokes 