Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Pinning hopes on the youth Personality of the week

Youth can change defective attitude in society, says Suresh

Coimbatore: An engineer by profession, S. Suresh took to acting. Though he became famous in television serials, the desire for contributing his mite for transforming society made him start movements on various social issues.

His research-based campaigns include budget planner for homes to overcome deficit, making people more road safety conscious and emphasising the need for union of hearts before marriage to end domestic squabbles.

He spoke to V.S. Palaniappan about the Youth Task Force that was formed to tap the youth energy and his works.

“Youth can change the defective attitude in society if they have the will to work towards it,” he says.

“What I seek is not rewards, recognition or remuneration. Society should benefit from these efforts. This can be made possible by those in authority and those with resources. Hence my efforts are to draw their attention to experimenting with these concepts. I have experimented with these concepts for nearly a decade, and they have yielded positive results today,” he says.

“One should have the approach of Gandhi, the expressions of Bharathiar and the actions of Nethaji to get at result-oriented actions in changing society,” he says.

“Loss of lives in road accidents can be prevented if every stakeholder comes forward to contribute his mite. Everyone seems to be waiting for the other person or the Government to take the lead. Unfortunately, policy makers and those implementing it work in the reverse gear,” he says.

“Youth should decide not to be a mute spectator.”

The Youth Task Force based in Chennai has already proved its worth in the campaign.

‘Respect Red – Don’t shed blood’, ‘Three Mirrors and No Errors’ are some of his famous one-liners. The Task Force never holds meetings or seminars - it gets into action on the roads proving the results.

If everyone follows the slogan ‘Sleep early the previous night, start early the next morning – but don’t leave us early’, the fatalities on roads can be brought down, Mr. Suresh says.

Safety Resource Centre is an umbrella organisation of Mr. Suresh that works on road safety, causes for accidents, reasons and remedial measures.

The centre works on policy issues such as devising a nationwide uniform emergency number and organising courses for drivers. Films and CDs are used to communicate the research results and concepts and for the service front.

The centre’s work has led to designing of charts on road rule violations and punishments in respect of 36 penal sections in an A4 size sheet.

“I have shifted to Coimbatore with designs for making its roads better and safer,” he says.

Reforms can be through sustained campaigns on smaller issues such as using the free-left, junction speed, air horn usage, violation of bus bay, usage of red tapes to segregate lanes at junctions and barricades to streamline traffic.

Mr. Suresh pins hopes on the future generation. “School students can be moulded into safe road users through a one-minute capsule course every day. Academicians should end the debate on whether road safety should be taught to students as a separate subject. Culture revision can be ensured through habit revision,” he says.

To know more about his mission, dial 044-65133133 (manned by two accident victims employed as a measure of rehabilitating them) or visit www.freshindian.org.

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