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Ragpickers inspire Vidisha to keep town clean, paint it red
Strangely, in this neighbouring Vidisha town ragpickers inspire locals to clean and paint the walls of the area with their imagination to dissuade them from throwing garbage on roads.
Strangely, in this neighbouring Vidisha town ragpickers inspire locals to clean and paint the walls of the area with their imagination to dissuade them from throwing garbage on roads.
On August 15, 2014, about two months ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat, a group of men and children launched a cleanliness drive in Vidisha and told the people to change the area into a beautiful place by painting its walls so that nobody could litter it.
The group spends few hours on Sundays and any public holiday to begin their cleanliness drive. An eight-year-old Tanish, the youngest member, said, "I joined the campaign as it makes me happy to clean the area and paint it."
Another group member Pooja Chhetri, 16, said, "I am happy that this would not only make my town clean but also compel the parents of rag pickers to think of putting their children in another profession to earn their livelihood."
A senior member of the group, Jitendra Jain, 40, said, "We have formed a Samarpan Sewa Samiti to do social work. We used to teach children from underprivileged families who picked rags to meet their ends."
"These children showed their intentions to live a better life but they also told us that their family can’t think of any other thing than heap of garbage. On the Independence day, we took the pledge to finish garbage from the city for them," Jain added.
"We changed the faces of many areas in Vidisha town through paintings. We had started (our campaign)from temple to mosque togather support of all religions. After six months we received very good response because Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh clerics came forward to support us," said a 20-year-old chartered accountancy student, Gaurav Raghuvanshi, also a volunteer.
