Driving Hyderabad clean

It’s been a busy few months for Tejaswi Podapati and the volunteers for her Bhoomi Foundation, who come together on weekends for cleanliness drives in the city. Tejaswi’s work in Ongole, which has been transformed into a poster-free city, thanks largely to her efforts, has earned her national recognition. After her success with Ongole, she began her urban cleanliness mission in Hyderabad from April 2017. Since then, over 20 venues in the city have been cleaned up. Around 150 registered volunteers — most of them college students, IT employees and school children — have joined her mission.

“Hyderabad is one of the biggest metros in the country. Can you believe that we rank at number 22 in the yearly Swachh Survekshan, a survey that judges cities for the government’s Swachh Bharat Mission? I don’t think the city deserves this. We hope to take it to the top 10 at least by the next survey,” says Tejaswi, sharing that over the last few months her team has covered almost the entire stretch of KPHB, and is branching out to other areas as well. In fact, this weekend, all the volunteers are heading to SR Nagar for a cleanliness drive.

Bhoomi Foundation’s urban cleanliness project has been majorly driven by volunteers. However, Tejaswi tells us that the scenario is very different in Hyderabad when compared to Ongole. “Ongole always had curious onlookers asking us what we were doing and why we were doing it. Many even joined us later. But that’s not the case with Hyderabad,” she says with a smile. “Many people don’t even notice us! We have several volunteers, but we need many more because this is a huge city. We start early in the morning and wrap up by the time the roads become busy, and if we do not finish that day, we have to push the work for another time.”

While the public, in general, expects The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to be responsible for the city’s sanitation projects, Tejaswi thinks otherwise. “How much can they do? They clean, and then people mess up again. We want people to be involved in the cleanliness drives themselves, because that will make them conscious of their doings,” she asserts.