Further success for grantee, SaveLIFE Foundation in India

The team at SaveLIFE Foundation (India), one of the grantees of the Bloomberg Philanthropies funded Road Safety Grants Programme, has welcomed further success within the framework of their road safety advocacy campaign.

This week, on the back of exhaustive efforts to have road safety included as an election issue, the Indian National Congress party released its manifesto in which road safety has been identified as a key issue. This is the first time ever in India that a political party has clearly outlined its commitment to road safety.

The manifesto (link to full document – see point 1, page 37), in its infrastructure action plan, states: ‘The Indian National Congress will launch a ‘National Road Transport Safety Programme’ citing a goal to ‘halve road accidents within five years’ through ‘strong willed political commitment’ and to ‘change road safety culture’.

This achievement comes as a result of direct meetings with leaders of the National Congress party, and the opposition parties, during which the issue of road safety being an election issue was strongly raised, and indeed promoted as an issue that other parties were looking to raise. The meetings also served as a platform to inform party leaders of the scope of the national road safety situation, many of whom were not previously aware of the enormity of the issue.

Not content with just this step, the SaveLIFE Foundation team is working hard to ensure that other major parties respond by including road safety as a key issue in their election platforms, with an end result that road safety be a top-of-mind and accountable topic for the national government.

We shall keep you informed as the election process continues.