The facts about India’s environmental pollution read like the worst-case scenario of an apocalyptic movie — six of the world’s ten most polluted cities are in India, while the excessive use of plastic bags and their unregulated disposal has led to choked lakes, ponds and urban sewerage systems. Some call this a problem in the starkest terms imaginable, warning that Indians, as a culture, have reached a tipping point. Others work hard to solve it, chipping away at the indifference.
Long before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wielded a broom to launch the Clean India campaign, aiming to tackle the country’s hygiene problems by 2019, quiet undercurrents of change were already flowing.
On a crisp October morning in Pune, children flocked to their schools, carrying bags of plastic waste collected over a month at their own homes. For more than two years, it has been a monthly ritual — the excitement and curiosity in the air, as they stand in long queues, waiting patiently, expectantly to find out how much the waste has earned them. The waste collected by them are segregated into 20 types, sold at Rs8 (48 fils) per kilogram and sent for recycling.
This is Susan Raj and Vinod Bodhankar’s labour of love, relying upon a ready army of schoolchildren who are witness to the effects of unfettered human intervention. If anything, environmental issues have become larger — and more urgent.
Since 2012, these eloquent and passionate environmental advocates, with the capacity to reach a broad audience, have started a cultural wave in Maharashtra by bringing together schoolchildren and setting core values from student to family to society. Starting with just 150 students and educating them about how plastic waste can pollute rivers and oceans and harm marine life, the programme now has 75,000 students from 75 schools in the city who call themselves Sagarmitra (Friend of Ocean).
In a country beset with many dramatic and serious issues, Raj and Bodhankar, founders of Pune-based social enterprise called The Academic Advisors (TAA), surely know the truth in the old expression, “From a little acorn, a mighty oak can grow.” They play the role of a catalyst in bringing together the public and private sectors and educational institutions on to a common platform.
“We believe in empowerment that comes from self-sufficiency. While non-governmental organisations [NGOs] apply for various certificates to attract donations, we have focused on providing services to ensure that work goes on. We have been walking a tightrope so far,” says Raj, adding that it has been challenging four years.
Without a clear plan for how to make a difference — only the knowledge that she had to feel she was on the right path — Raj chose to register her own organisation in 2010 “to do justice” to her dream. Beginning with HIV/Aids prevention treatment and spreading awareness among sex workers, Raj focused on doing away with the HIV/Aids-related stigma. “More than virus itself, prejudice and discrimination directed at infected people were killing them. Regrettably, it exists in health-care settings.”
After setting up an Aids-care home in Pune, Raj, who has a nursing degree, started an alternative treatment for HIV/Aids patients, administering high protein SAM (Selenium, Aspirin, Multivitamin) therapy with the help of an NGO. “We brought the death rate to zero within one year of running the programme,” she recalls. Later, she was invited by the World Health Organization as an adviser to help design an HIV intervention programme for high-risk communities.
In 2012, Raj and Bodhankar turned their focus to the next challenging issue — waste. “I found a similarity in HIV and waste. Both attack the immune system. HIV attacks human immune system and waste attack Earth’s immune system,” says Raj, who has also designed a life skills orientation programme for schools. “While implementing a project among sex workers under Indian Health Organisation, I realised that children must be given right information and trained in decision-making skills because every decision we take in life has consequences. The programme included sex education, which filled a small gap where teachers and parents found themselves inadequate.”
Sagarmitra was born from the need to convey the reality of environment pollution. Using simple and sometimes sentimental narratives about the oceans and its wildlife to articulate ideas about the inner workings of largely unseen things, schoolchildren are encouraged to collect plastic waste generated in their own home. “The students receive 3M — mitigation of pollution, marks for the environment project and money from our recycler,” she says.
Over the period of two years, the children have fetched around 17 tonnes of plastic waste, which is equivalent to cleaning up 150 kilometres of an urban Indian river, according to Bodhankar, head of the programme. “This programme can be replicated across the country,” he says.
“Apart from Pune, we have started the programme in four other cities in Maharashtra, and are aiming for 150 cities and 1.2 million children by 2017 in our plastic-free garbage drive,” adds Bodhankar, “If one school brings in 100 kilograms of plastic in a month, we can save one square metre of ocean water from pollution.”
Raj says: “Now, we have also started a programme in Maharashtra, wherein we sell the plastic collected in weekly markets in villages to scrap dealers. Banning plastic bags will do nothing to save the environment — it is important to change the mindset of people.”
Making a compelling case, Bodhankar says plastic waste is a global problem — it is pervasive, pernicious and persistent. Most of the plastic waste gets into the water bodies and eventually ends up in the oceans, where currents distribute it around the world. “Plastic goes from sewerages to rivers and then to seas,” he says. “Recent maps show that the United States alone has a collection of floating plastic — an island that is a 2,000km x 800km and 28-foot-thick Pacific trash vortex. It is the six times the size of Maharashtra, which is half of India. In a few years, India will face a similar problem.” The trash vortex known as the Great Pacific garbage patch is a gyre of marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean.
Lauding Modi’s Clean India campaign, Bodhankar, a yoga teacher, says, “By itself no government can clean up a country. It can lead. People need to wake up and do their bit. Enough of being armchair critics ... it is time to grind.”
Bodhankar is a regular at Indian Maritime Foundation’s annual clean-up drive, part of an international coastal clean-up initiative of Washington-based Ocean Conservancy that has become the world’s largest volunteer effort for ocean health. He believes cleaning one of the world’s dirtiest rivers, the Ganges, and restoring it to its past glory is tough, but not impossible.
Last year, the Ganges was ranked as the second most polluted river in the world after River Citarum in Indonesia. While many environmentalists believe it is an impossible task as it would require huge public investment, Bodhankar says, “Once Bhopal [capital of Madhya Pradesh state] Sagarmitra movement takes off in November and creates substantial number of volunteers [more than 100,000 to start with], we will be undertaking the movement in every town and city of the Ganges basin. That will be equivalent to reaching out to one third of the population of India. Whatever time it takes, it is possible.”
Participating in the 15th World Lake Conference in Perugia, Italy, in September, was a turning point for Sagarmitra. “The interaction among this diverse audience, including Unesco members, resulted in a wider discussion, with the goal of solving complex issues. In another two years’ time, we expect our programme to be funded by Unesco,” Bodhankar says.
From Pune, Raj moved back to her village in Chhattisgarh last year. Her ultimate goal is to stimulate reverse migration of people from urban to rural areas by integrated rural development. “I believe farmers are the core of human existence. Whatever progress we make with science and technology, the fact remains that we all need to have food on our plates. And migration towards cities happen when farmers are neglected,” Raj says.
To that end, Raj is collaborating with Krishi Vigyan Kendra — a front-line agricultural extension centre under the Indian Council of Agriculture Research — and agriculture, forestry and horticulture colleges to promote the idea of reverse migration, and to make sure rural inhabitants do not gravitate towards urban settlements for a better educational and employment opportunities.
“Plenty of knowledge is available in the country but it is not reaching the struggling farmers. We are working hard to make sure the knowledge, tools and the system assist in achieving productivity. An organisation called Evangelical Social Action Forum has helped me bring a thousand farmers together as the Small Farmers Agro business Consortium,” Raj says. “We try to associate with as many entities as possible to provide adequate infrastructure in rural areas, to ensure that people there have equal opportunities for sustained growth and development like their urban counterparts.”
Initially, funding trickled in, but now many Indian and multinational companies, as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR), are coming in to support and fund the social enterprise.
“In these four years we have not been able to retain employees due to fund crunch. I have used up all the money of my family, but we still continue because the path we have chosen will surely bring the change we want to see,” Raj says.
There is hope yet for India.
Suparna Dutt D’Cunha is a writer based in Pune, India.
