Do-It-Yourself street cleaning trend sweeps through India’s cities

France 24 ^ | January 5, 2015 | Satish Bhuwalka

[2ndDivisionVet]

Volunteers cleaning the streets of Raipur, India.

In cities all over India, anonymous men and women are picking up trash, fixing potholes and painting dirty walls. They’re not paid to do this; in fact, they pay for their tools themselves. These citizens are part of a growing movement of “spot-fixers”, volunteers who use their free time to clean up ugly parts of their city, and then post before-and-after pictures on social media.

While teams of volunteers like this have operated steadily in big cities like Bangalore and New Delhi for several years now, dozens more have sprung up over the past few months. Some of the newest groups say they were inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Clean India” campaign, which was launched in October. Modi called on all Indians to do their bit to keep the country clean, and specifically suggested that “if you see dirt anywhere, take a picture and upload it on social media – then take a video of yourself cleaning it and upload the photo of the clean spot”.

Old and new groups alike share a common aspect – they don’t accuse the authorities of failing to do their jobs, but instead emphasize the individual’s role in shaping their community.

“Whenever we travel and people ask us where we’re from, they say, oh, India – it’s very dirty there, isn’t it?” Satish Bhuwalka is a founding member of “Bunch of Fools”, a volunteer spot-fixing group that was founded two months ago in the city of Raipur.

I started this group with six other friends; we’re all former classmates and businessmen. Whenever we travel and people ask us where we’re from, they say, oh, India – it’s very dirty there, isn’t it? This makes us feel very bad. So we wanted to do something about it, show a different face of India to the world. And we firmly believe that keeping streets clean is every citizen’s responsibility.

Every Sunday, a group of at least 30 of us go out to different slum areas in the city to clean up garbage and fix what needs fixing, like holes in the street or sidewalk. The tools, the paint – we pay for all of it out of our pockets. We don’t ask for donations or do any fundraising, since we don’t want to be linked to any political group or organisation.

Often, the people living in the slum areas find it quite funny that we – educated businessmen – are picking up trash. They say, this isn’t your job – don’t you have more important things to do? But then we explain why we’re doing this, that the streets are important to us, and they get motivated to start cleaning too. These are usually very poor people, who can’t necessarily pay for materials, but they can pick up garbage and might then think twice about where they throw their own garbage.

Of course, not only poor people litter in India, far from it! We call ourselves ‘Bunch of Fools’ in opposition to the ‘wise’ people, which is what India's educated people are called – educated people who still throw garbage out of the windows of their cars! If they’re wise, we are the fools…

A few before-and-after shots of the "Bunch of Fools" work in Raipur:

[TalBlack]

Keep this up and the “Big Bang Theory” writers are going to have to work harder.

[Fester Chugabrew]

This is what able-bodied recipients on the public dole should be doing continually and by compulsion, just like the boys and girls from the county jails who tidy up the highways and bi-ways. Oh, and don’t let them vote until they 1.) get off the public dole, and 2.) pass a test or two in basic civics.

[Carriage Hill]

Pretty awful, isn't it?

[Vigilanteman]

We did it the same way when we lived outside of Tokyo in the 1990s. Of course, a snowstorm requiring street cleaning was usually only a once or twice a year thing there. But it was fun to see and join all the neighbors in action.

We did the same with the public parks. Each neighborhood would have their cleaning turn and we all showed up with brooms, pitchforks, trash bags and/or shovels.

Public parks were a place for kids to play, not for gang bangers to hang out and make drug deals.

[oh8eleven]

That's like all those white folks who go in the ghetto to help out the "poor".
You got that right. I quit donating money to the United Way in 1981 and I NEVER donated a single minute for my employer's "Day of Giving."
And here we are decades later and nothing has changed at all.

[Bigg Red]

Good for them. I hope it catches on, and I spreads to the USA.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

A cultural movement like this can work wonders, far beyond what it actually does, because it motivates people to want to improve something, be it their property, their neighborhood, or themselves.

Socialists are attracted to this, but they always fail because they want to *direct* and *force* people to do this in a regimented and controlled fashion, the way the socialist wants. This is a big reason that people despise socialists, and would rather live in squalor than give the socialists what they want.

[Yardstick]

This is very cool. I wonder how widespread it is?

[SoConPubbie]

Indians in the US tend to live their lives very conservatively—if you count wedlock before childbirth, hard work, lack of criminality, and educational and professional attainment as conservative—but they unfortunately tend to vote liberally. I think in part they bring their sense of social injustice in what they see in India to the US.

Maybe I have been lucky so far, but the Indians I've had the opportunity to discuss politics with so far, have all been well into the conservative spectrum.

[married21]

Wow. The high price of idealism. (I’m feeling pretty grateful right now. The beach near us has some free street parking, and a $5.00 lot.)

[Bigg Red]

Good for them. I hope it catches on, and I spreads to the USA.

***
Duh! Should be

Good for them. I hope it catches on, and it spreads to the USA.

(I’s don’t gots ta be spreadin’ to the USA; I already live here. Also, I would prefer not to spread any more than I already have in the last several years.)

[Straight Vermonter]

I remember stories from New York City in the 40’s and 50’s where the Mayor would ask the citizens to shovel the streets after big snow storms so essential public services and folks in general could function. People would dig in and it took far less time then waiting for the plows.

In Vermont the spring snow melt reveals all the trash that over the long winter ended on the roadside, in front yards, parks etc. So every spring we have "Green-up Day". People collect the trash and the trash companies pitch in by picking up the bags of trash left along the roads. Lots of groups like the Rotary, KoC, Scouts, churches, etc do it as an outing.

[Straight Vermonter]

A cultural movement like this can work wonders, far beyond what it actually does, because it motivates people to want to improve something, be it their property, their neighborhood, or themselves.

Broken windows theory.

[stevio]

Good for them. Indians are good people, yea they’re coming here and taking our jobs, but maybe they can turn their country around.

[sphinx]

India could use a little cultural evolution in this area. I hope it catches on. We used to litter a lot in the U.S. Not that we're perfect nowadays, but we are much better than we used to be. I still maintain that Lady Bird Johnson was probably the most useful First Lady we have ever had.

Here in DC, "spot cleaning" is usually an early sign of gentrification. I well recall the years during which Capitol Hill began to turn around. Come a fine spring morning, and the new neighbors would be out in force, working first and foremost on their own front yards but also tackling the problem areas in parks and alleys. I know that these were the new neighbors because there were certain easily observable differences between them and the older residents.

[bgill]

They are a bunch of fools if they think the garbage won’t be back within a week. All they did was give out free fish rather than having the neighborhood catch their own fish.

[Excellence]

This may seem unrelated, but there is also an amazing number of small private schools in India, because the government is just incompetent. This is part of a people empowering trend.

[kearnyirish2]

BEar in mind that for the most part Americans deal with the cream of the crop from India; many of them have low opinions of countrymen left behind (they tend to view them as unmotivated).

[kearnyirish2]

Here in NJ they’ve used convicts to do it (though it has been a couple of years since I’ve seen them).

[kearnyirish2]

Catholic hospitals do weel there because many wealthier Hindus prefer them to the regular ones. In a country of a billion+ people, there just isn’t much value placed on life and they’d be treated as just another cog in the wheel.