MAD’s efforts go down the drain

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, August 2

Dehradun’s student activist group, Making A Difference (MAD), had cleaned up the Nehru Colony Block D on Sunday last. It had also engaged the locals to ensure that the locality remains clean. This activity was in continuation of MAD’s ongoing campaign wherein the group cleans up various places in the city.

Despite Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s involvement in the cleaning up act with MAD at the same location, Block D was back to being the dump it was when MAD volunteers returned today. When the activists started their work at the Nehru Colony, waste was scattered all over the road and it took the group a little less than three hours to clean it all up.

On MAD’s request, the Nagar Nigam had sent a JCB and a waste collection vehicle, along with a few workers, to help in the clean-up intiative.

MAD’s campaign has made the Nagar Nigam much more serious about the dilapidated garbage disposal system in the city and the Chief Minister’s personal involvement has ensured that on its part the state government judiciously shared its resources with the Municipality. Also, recently, the state had cleared the setting up of a recycling plant.

In the past four years of MAD’s campaign for a cleaner city, based on pocket money resources, many youngsters have joined the team, which has made it an effective pressure group aiming at “lobbying” for the right causes such as revival of streams, conservation of greenery and town planning.

MAD has taken the Chief Minister to two locations in the city (Tyagi Road and Nehru Colony) and plans to continue with such drives weekly till the arc of civic sense intersects with that of Government empathy. Present in today’s activity were Shardul Singh Rana, Jai Sharma, Himalaya Ramola, Shailja Chaurasia, Kunain Ansari, Saurav Joshi, Pooja Bhatt, Manvenddra Singh Rawat, Saurabh Nautiyal, Vidushi, Adarsh Bhatt among many others.