From Kanyakumari To Kashmir, Man On A Mission For Road Safety

Mangaluru: Subramanian Narayanan, 41, has a mission — to walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir to promote road safety.

Narayanan, from Kerala, insists he will not ride, drive or pedal, but walk the 3,600km across 20 cities and 11 states over the next couple of months.

Subbu, as he is fondly called, decided on this mission in April.

His employer, Germany-based Hella not only approved his leave, but also decided to sponsor the mission.

“About 1.5lakh people die in road accidents every year in India,” Subbu said.

“If you compare that with the population of India, the number may seem small. But if you divide this number by the number of days in a year, the total number of deaths works out to 400 per day – more than the capacity of an aircraft. When an air crash becomes national news, 400 deaths in road accidents goes unnoticed.”

Subbu not only wants to spread awareness through his walk, but also study road infrastructure on one of the busiest highways in the country — NH 66 which connects Kanyakumari and Kashmir.

An Innova fitted with a camera will follow Subbu and record his walk.

This data will then be handed over to the Union ministry of road transport and highways.

Subbu claimed one of his key ambitions is to bring together all platforms working for road safety under one umbrella so that government funds allotted for road development are distributed equally among various regions.

Citing an example from his native state, Subbu said Chavakkad in Thrissur has two-lane roads but a six-lane project has been sanctioned for Ponnani, located half-an-hour’s drive away.

“Imagine the bottleneck that will be created when vehicles flowing from a six-lane road piles up on a narrower road. There needs to be communication between various bodies and sectors which I intend to promote,” he said.

In the last 12 days, Subbu has covered at least 730km across Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

He will next walk through Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh, back to Haryana and Punjab and finally reach Jammu and Kashmir. (ToI)