What is this photo about? It came to me courtesy of Jan Chipchase, a design guru who spoke at a great meeting last week on how to help microfinance meet the needs of clients better. As an aside, the most poignant question posed at this meeting of donors, investors, policymakers and researchers on microfinance: Why oh why did it take so long for “client needs” to be the topic of conversation? And the most important question posed: How can we go beyond understanding something about client behavior and choices and translate that knowledge to scalable policies for banking to the poor?
Anyhow, I digress, back to the contest. This is a photo of a nudge. The symbols on the wall are of a shrine. There is no shrine behind those walls. Why is there a symbol of a shrine on this wall? In the spirit of holiday charitable giving, I will give away two copies of More Than Good Intentions – one to the first person to answer correctly, and a second to a randomly chosen person from amongst those who get the right answer.
Find out who won here.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Perhaps the walls are being recycled: these walls could have previously been in front of a shrine but then were taken (they seem to be cheap aluminium) or the shrine moved.
You’re not supposed to park your bikes or motorbikes in front of a shrine.
So that people won’t urinate on the wall as a sign of respect.
To prevent people from spitting chewing tobacco on the walls.
The rides in the foreground don’t seem to be locked, so perhaps its to guilt people enough to deter theft?
Or perhaps the bikes are illegaly parked there, by employees of whatever is behind that wall, and those signs are painted there in hopes that the police to not give them tickets?
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To encourage people to park their bikes parallel to the wall and not perpendicular
to remind people of their religious obligation to tithe
No one will graffiti there now because there is already an inscription of something greater (famous shrine), so the local gang sign will be kinda unnoticed anyways, so they wont even bother