Around The Country In 365 Days For A Cleaner India

November 6, 2017

IMG_20160214_152055047-1 — Rakhi Kulkarni, Sharayu Ghodekar, Rohan Sadadekar

The Swachh Bharat Mission launched by the government recently completed three years. But, the ambitious project has faced several implementational challenges around the country. Factors like segregation of waste, garbage disposal and minimising use of plastic have not been dealt with thoroughly yet.

Bharat Varsh, an initiative by three Puneites, has taken up the challenge to spread awareness amongst people with respect to cleanliness, throughout the country.

“We thought about this two years ago, after the Swachh Bharat campaign was launched. We wanted to travel around the country to understand the situation and reach out to as many people as we could,” stated Rakhi Kulkarni, 27, a legal professional, who embarked on this journey on November 5 along with her friends and IT professionals, Rohan Sadadekar, 30, and Sharayu Ghodekar, 27.

As part of their schedule, the plan includes conducting seminars, workshops and awareness programmes amongst people as well as getting them to actively participate in cleanliness drives.

“We will be organising cleanliness drives at bus stops and railway stations. These are the places that are regularly used by the masses. We will also be educating people on how to minimise use of plastic, use cloth bags and incorporate habits that will impact their lives. The main purpose is to get them to understand the importance of cleanliness in their areas. So during the cleanliness drives, we’ll be clicking before and after pictures for them to see the impact. ”

Throughout the journey, this trio will travel to different cities located in all the Indian states. Their journey has started from Hampi, Karnataka and will end 365 days later in Goa. “We will visit around four cities in a state depending upon on the reach. Our travel is self-funded. We didn’t want to reach out to any corporation as that would completely defeat the purpose. We are travelling mainly through buses and trains. Our stay will be limited to hostels and homestays. We want to reach out to the grass root level and spread awareness,” adds Kulkarni.

They will also be enacting street plays and teaching people how to make the best use of waste. “We are doing this so that people understand the importance of cleanliness, in a fun manner.

We’ll be teaching them how to make useful items out of plastic, paper, cardboard so that they can learn how to reuse waste material.”