Mumbai: Founder of the Road Safety World Series T20 cricket tournament and Chief of RTO Thane (Konkan Range), Ravi Gaikwad has been conferred the Life Time World Peace Ambassador award by Wockhardt Foundation's The World Peacekeepers Movement for his achievements and service to humanity and his commitment to the cause of peace.
Ravi Gaikwad was born in Pune to Pushpa and Kisanrao Gaikwad. His father is a retired senior bureaucrat in the Government of Maharashtra and his mother is a director of a financial institution. He has in depth study of Indian Constitution and has studied all the constitutions of the world. He has written a separate new draft for Indian Constitution. Mr Ravi Gaikwad is also the grandson of first communist MLA and leader of Independence Movement Shree Bhaskarrao Auti and nephew of current Deputy Speaker of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Mr Vijay Auti.
The Road Safety World Series T20 competition, which kicked off on March 7, 2020 to much fanfare at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai where India Legends led by Sachin Tendulkar took on the Brian Lara-led West Indies Legends, had to be called off due to the Covid-19 situation worldwide. South Africa Legends led by Jonty Rhodes, Sri Lanka Legends led by Tillakaratne Dilshan and Australia Legends led by Brett Lee were the other teams in fray.
The main aim of the Road Safety World Series is to drive social change in the country in terms of people’s outlook towards behaviour on the roads, while driving, riding or even walking. As cricket is the most followed sport in the country and sports personalities are looked up to as idols by all, Ravi Gaikwad believed that a sporting event like the Road Safety World Series will work as an ideal platform to attract more people who can be reach out to spread this message, influence them and gradually change people’s mind-set towards their behaviour on the roads.
He believed that this can’t happen with the work of one, two or a group individuals. People should take awareness towards road safety as a movement and create maximum awareness to save human lives on the roads because every year India kills a decent size European nation on its roads. Around 1,50,000 people are killed and more than 4,50,000 people are critically injured in our country in road accidents every year. One person dies every four minutes in our country and out of every hundred people dying in the world, 30 are Indians. This number is increasing day-by-day. As per the World Research Institute, by 2020, the death toll in road accidents every year will reach up to 2.2 million and 50 per cent will be Indians, which means 11 lakh people will be dying due to road accidents only.
