Restoring the glory
A local clean-up drive in Kumaon shows that there are some pay-offs of PM Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, writes Anjuli Bhargava
Even Goddess Kali, ensconced safely at 6,000 feet and surrounded by the majestic mountains in Majkhali’s famous temple couldn’t have missed the flurry of activity in the first week of March all around her.
On March 2 — a few days before the COVID -19 panic hit India — 36 students of Himalayan Village School, along with four teachers, turned up with brooms, gloves and pans in hand to take part in a daylong clean-up drive led by an eight member-team from a local NGO Green Hills. Around 10-12 local residents were also present to lend a hand. The next day, enthusiasm flagged a bit and the exercise attracted a smaller number. On day three, with the enthusiasm that only children can muster, 30 students of Himalayan Village School, the eight team members of Green Hills and around eight local residents managed to gather more trash to be transported from the roads and hillsides. In these three days, around three pickups of waste were collected from roadside and sent to the trenching ground near Ranikhet.
The clean-up is part of a larger initiative taken by a set of residents including long-term resident Ajay Prasad who leads many community initiatives in the area and Aditya Babbar, a recent settler in these parts. Like others, who have settled in the area from other cities, Babbar, too, has been increasingly alarmed by the unchecked garbage heaps all around. “When one lives in such pristine surroundings, the last thing you want to encounter is plastic, rotting food waste and other trash, all mixed and thrown on the hillsides,” he says. He sought technical assistance from Green Hills which operates in Kasar Devi and the Almora region and roped in other residents into the drive. Babbar also visited another NGO Waste Warriors in Corbett to learn how to proceed with such an exercise.
The drive is part of a larger sixmonth pilot project in which the segregated dry waste will be collected for six months by the Green Hills team from shops, residents and other establishments in the area and sent for further processing or reuse. The larger message — that it is not acceptable to treat the hillsides as your personal dustbin — is also being relayed to the wider community in the area.
A number of factors have come together to make such an exercise even possible. One, the influx of an educated lot from the cities has helped bring more awareness and some knowledge as well as expertise on how to proceed. In Kasar Devi, for instance, Asha De’souza who has worked with various international bodies including the International Labour Organization in Geneva has formed the Green Hills NGO and brings a wealth of knowledge, expertise and wisdom to the table, dealing with her own garbage using the Japanese Bokashi method..
What has changed is the attitude. Local shops, establishments and hotels are now paying attention unlike a few years back when everyone just turned a blind eye. To the surprise of all, some holding properties in the vicinity willingly agreed to contribute funds for the clean-up, a departure from the past since even in places totally dependent on tourism such as Corbett, the resort owners don’t want to financially support such initiatives. It is always perceived as “someone else’s problem”.
Although locals are yet to fully buy into the attempt, the good news is that locals don’t look at you as if you’ve “lost your mind” when you suggest a clean-up drive. A similar clean-up drive attempted by the Waste Warriors in Himachal and Kumaon failed to drum up any support whatsoever from the locals prior to Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Locals were of the view that these “mad” experiments by the outsiders would never succeed and were not worth their while.
But somewhere now there appears to be a slow and subtle change in mindset. Even if they are not yet enthusiastic, they are no longer derisive or dismissive. They may not yet be lifting a hand to join you but at least they don’t chuck a plastic packet onto the hillside right before your eyes.