Norway touch to Mumbai’s Swachh campaign
A group of 15 ex-convicts and drug addicts from Norway are working on a project to build toilets for women near Mumbai Central railway station.
Work has almost finished and it is likely to be completed by March end.
The project, in partnership with JSW Foundation Mumbai, is the fourth to be undertaken by the Norwegian organisation ‘Back in the Ring’ (BITR) in India.
The group is led by Alexander Medin, who took up the initiative as part of ‘karma yoga’ after observing the deplorable state of civic amenities for women in Mumbai.
All members of this group were once drug addicts and convicts. But their lives changed after they started practicing Yoga daily in their prison cells under the guidance of renowned instructor Alexander Medin.
With the help of workers from Samatech, a technology firm, they constructed eight compartments of a public toilet for women.
Samatech founder Akshat Gupta said, “We just need to lay tiles and arrange water supply and electricity before the toilets can be used. The project, costing around Rs 25 lakh, is funded by BITR and Jindal Steel Works. It is a non-profit initiative.”
“Initially, it was difficult to attract them to yoga since they were drug addicts and convicts and they were disturbed. But slowly yoga changed their lives,” Medin told the Free Press Journal.