Clean Delhi Drive - A Brief History

Here is a fine example social activism that has got results. In November 2009, H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Founder of Art of Living, said that he would like the Delhi-NCR team to do something for the city. So some volunteers of The Art of Living in Delhi-NCR got together and started thinking of various ideas. After many meetings of brainstorming and consultations, it was decided to take up cleanliness as the theme.

When this was discussed with H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, he gave his full support and advised that we also include Yamuna in this. The team decided that they will involve 1 million citizens in this initiative. The figure came up just like that, from air, and everyone said a big YES! As the noise of excitement settled down, discussions started about how to get these 1 million people, and whether this is the correct number, etc. Finally, it was agreed that this number was absolutely fine – it meant 10% population of Delhi-NCR – if we could not even inspire these many people, how could it be called a Citizen’s Action Plan!

The Art of Living volunteers and teachers started planning and involving everyone else – the various government departments, NGOs, students, corporate sector, religious bodies, Resident Welfare Associations, Market Traders Associations, Taxi-wallahs, Coolies, and, and, it became a big list.

The first event, Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna, was to increase the awareness about the urgent and important need of cleaning the Yamuna - a public function was organized in Delhi on Mar 16, 2010 at the Purana Quila in New Delhi. And it was a great launch - roughly 20,000 people were there - represented by all the Partners of this movement. In all, we had more than 250 partners at this stage. The launch happened in the presence of H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and provided the impetus for the next stage.

Children can be the best activists and inspirations. Someone in the team came up with the idea of a Painting Competition on the theme. The idea caught on, and nearly 600,000 children from more than 1000 schools in Delhi-NCR participated! The winners were chosen by the jury consisting of prominent artists and they were honored in the presence of Mr. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development, Government of India in August.

The next phase was the actual cleaning, the period for this was set as Sep 6 to 11. In consultation with the Government, 41 strategic sites were chosen, where thousands of people contacted the local residents and business-people, and created awareness about the need for keeping things clean, and inspired them to participate in actual cleaning. Companies came forward and took ownership of one or more sites. Each site had a coordinator (a volunteer from Art of Living) along with a team. In addition, another team focused on Schools and Colleges, who chose nearby sites to create awareness. They did countless street plays. Everyone got a huge response. People wanted to do something, and came forward.

Today was the first day of culmination of this huge project – there was Clean Delhi Drive at 5 strategic sites. All of them were a big success – with people from all walks of life and organizations there. There was an element of celebration in the air.

For the next 4 days, rest of the sites will be taken up and completed. What an amazing experience. Once you decide to do something, it is possible. Just imagine the reach – each child took this message to his or her family - just this number means approximately 3 million people became aware. We all know, this is just the start though.