Volunteering to Clean up the Yamuna

Only two days after attending my first big event in India I got on a bus with 10 or so other volunteers and turned up at the infamous Yamuna River in Delhi for the next event, International Volunteering Day. I say infamous as the Yamuna is known as a bacteria-ridden sludge fest running alongside the east of Delhi. Sam Miller in his book on Delhi points out that great cities have been built around their rivers. Paris on the Seine, London around the Thames. The Yamuna is neglected, ignored and often used as a rubbish tip. Many homeless people live on its banks and life down here is another world separate from life in the rest of the city.

The aim of the day was to clean up the Yamuna. A passing journalism student had heard the band and seen all the school children. She wandered up and I explained that we were helping the bus loads of school children clean up the Yamuna. As we stood there in blue rubber gloves with rakes she looked incredulous and stated this was impossible. Of course, we added, this wasn’t the entire point of the day. The point was to involve children and young people in issues directly affecting their community, to promote active citizenship and volunteering. This seemed to be a concept that wasn’t understood. Behind us a few locals were chucking rubbish over the bridge into the river as the children was trying to rake out debris from the Yamuna’s murky shorelines. We pointed at the children and said the future of India. The journalism student pointed at the people on the bridge.


The buses kept coming, the bands kept playing and the rubbish kept coming. Soon the banks in the allotted space were full and the stash of rubber gloves has run out. Within an hour people has moved past the roped off area and had moved down the shore in a breakaway faction. One volunteer beckoned another group of us over to help. There were children, adults, volunteers and other expats working in NGOs raking rubbish out of the river, balking at the methane released by trash being disturbed. There was a sense of togetherness as people just got on with the job at hand.

The media present rightfully saw a good photo opportunity. Two photographers and one cameraman were present for over an hour clicking away at people working together, passing down empty bowls to be filled with the ever increasing mounds of plastic bags, city detritus and nameless lumps of half degraded black smelly goo. We were excited the next day when a few volunteers got their photos in the newspaper working away with some local people. One story though had completely missed the point as had the student. It pontificated: why hadn’t the government cleaned up the river, why were school children doing this, what was the point of an event like this.

Talking to the excellent organisation, Swechha, who ran the event, would have shown what the aims were. Walking around the stalls of NGOs, chatting to people, listening to the bands and the impassioned speeches from VSO and the UN would have made it clear. The title of the event itself was pretty obvious. The easiest thing of all to understand was the determination that people showed on the day, the way that they worked together and the enjoyment of community spirit and coming together that was apparent all around.

YouTube clip now available.

Can tech savvy teens affect change in India?

I’ve been at a VSO strategy conference all day on the outskirts of Delhi with the aim of helping to shape VSO India’s next three year strategy. We’ve had brilliant presentations that have put why I am here into India’s political, social and cultural context. A few random and surprising facts:

• 40% of India’s population are 13-25 year olds
• 40% live in cities
• The emerging middle class of 330 million people are mostly indifferent to the poor in their country
• Young people are not engaged with their country
• The Indian government only spends 1% of its GDP on public health (in comparison to around 6% in a developed country)
• A third of the world’s poor live in India
• There are 45 million internet users
• And 330 million people own a mobile phone...
• ...with another 15 million a month sold
• There is a shortage of Indian volunteers on projects in their own country.

For a country touted as ‘Shining India’ where is the government move to engage the young and middle classes, to promote active citizenship, to encourage those that are better off to help the poor in their own country?

Looking at the stats and facts above it seems obvious to me that technology and social media should play an important role in engaging the young who are the country’s future into actively playing a part in assisting their fellow citizens. With a largely corporate media do they not hear the widespread rural poverty, of the farmers committing suicide due to falling cotton prices or the wrong crops no longer suiting their climate-changed fields? If someone were to make it cool to spread this news, to become involved, to send tweets protesting for social change, to create Facebook groups, to document the failings of the government to enact change...perhaps India’s next generation would be the ones to realise that change. To be the change that you want to see in the world? It’s what the Father of India, Gandhi, wanted.