Nagpur: The Swachh Bharat campaign, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi a couple of years ago and being implemented by Nagpur Municipal Corporation with much fanfare, is in fact being mocked at the Bus Stand of MSRTC in the home town of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The City Unit of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with dirty images of the Bus Stand and surrounding area, said, “It seems that BJP-led NMC is only making castles in the air by announcing cleanliness drives every now and then. Nothing has changed on ground so far.”
The Swachh Bharat campaign seems to have been pushed to appalling low levels. Not only the Bus Stand, almost all the vantage points in the city have turned unclean with the onslaught of monsoon rains. Many places are littered with waste material and garbage dumped by “uncivilized” elements. The NMC officials undertake cleanliness drives with brooms in their hands and pose for photo ops. Swachh Bharat aims to give Mahatma Gandhi a clean India by 2019. Belittling this campaign into a photo-op is disrespectful to Gandhiji. Such acts rob people’s trust in initiatives and it spreads a very wrong message to the masses.
Swachh Bharat needs to grow bigger than a photo-op campaign.