But things could have been different had the idea of devoting a whole month to the goal of better traffic management been not mixed up with the month of Ramadan. People have been busy shopping fast-breaking food items and for the Eid as well resulting in heavy rush in the streets. So, they didn't have time to listen to the recitals on traffic rules blared out incoherently from microphones. Besides, most of the activities were confined to traffic intersections; the rest of the city saw business as usual. In fact, it was a non-starter from the beginning.

Those who planned it to coincide with the month of fasting might have had their our arguments, but the fact remains that the overlapping adversely affected both the traffic campaign as well as the Ramadan-related activities.

There has been parking anarchy and congestion in and around the shopping malls; even the deployment of community policemen could not help matters as the high-pitched mobility was simply too much to handle.

People, at least a section of them, would have learnt something about traffic rules had the exercise been organised at some other time of the year. The poor timing, total lack of planning and the failure to demonstrate imagination reduced the month to a futile exercise.

Perhaps a better way of imparting traffic education is to adopt a well-thought-out, locality-based problem-oriented approach which thence could be replicated within a broader framework of city-wide programmes. Obviously, what we have witnessed is an exercise in which the audience showed little interest, and for understandable reasons at that.