Swachh Bharat: Vrindavan- pipe dream girl?

Madhumangal Shukla never wanted to be part of the "tamasha." When hundreds of people thronged the streets of Vrindavan on November 7 last year to catch a glimpse of Dream Girl Hema Malini, Shukla decided to stick to his daily routine -a visit to Banke Bihari Temple and then cleaning the nearby trash. This is what the 52-year old priest from this holy town has been religiously doing every day over the last two decades.
Just a few kilometres away, on the main street of Vrindavan, people were jostling for space, trying to click pictures of the actor-turned-politician with their mobile phones. When the BJP member of Parliament from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh picked up a broom to clean the streets, the crowd went hysterical. The launch of one of the prime minister's s pet projects, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, in Vrindavan raised hopes of millions who were looking for salvation from filth and stink.
Cut to May 2015. What started with a bang over a year back has now petered out, if not ended.
Roads are littered with garbage, drains are choked with plastic, heaps of filth can be seen lying every 200 metres, pigs and cows can be spotted leisurely feasting on the waste and ubiquitous empty garbage bins have turned into a playing box for monkeys.
Welcome to Vrindavan, some 170 km off Delhi, where faith and filth co-exist, where giant bill boards of real estate developers promising luxurious apartments arise out of virgin agricultural fields; where chants of Radhe Radhe defy the stench in the air; and, yes, where people remember Swachh Bharat Abhiyan more as a photo opportunity and nothing more.
"Achha drama tha. Hema Malini ji ne jhadu pakda, photo diya aur chali gayeen [It was a nice drama. Hema Malini picked up a broom, got pictures clicked and then went away]," fumes Shukla,who has been tirelessly trying to bring to the attention of government the problem of garbage disposal on the Yamuna flood plain,the absence of a garbage disposal site and illegal construction by the land mafia. The old landfill site is being converted into a marketplace and the garbage is now being dumped either on the road opposite it or the nearby Yamuna flood bank. (ET Magazine's attempts to contact Hema Malini proved futile.) “Modiji alone can't clean India. His intentions are good but he lacks a good team," shrugs Shukla, who doubles up as a priest and RTI activist, and who filed a petition in the National Green Tribunal in Delhi last month. The tribunal duly issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government and the Mathura-Vrindavan Development Authority on the absence of landfill sites and dumping of garbage in flood plains.
As the Modi government completes a year in office, people in Vrindavan are becoming restless and clamouring for some concrete action on the ground.
Chandraprakash Sharma, principal at a local Sanskrit school, claims to have met the Mathura MP and made her aware of the problems but with little success. “Look what Modiji has done to Varanasi and its ghats," he says. “Achhe din can be brought only by Modi and not by Hema Malini. She is just a Bollywood actor.“ The garbage mess is not just confined to the main town. A few kilometers away from the temple, one reaches the banks of river Yamuna which has seen a spurt in illegal construction over the last few years. Plastics, flowers and filth have converted it into a drain. Many deserted heritage buildings are in terrible shape. But miraculously Vrindavan still manages to attract visitors from abroad.
Tomas Ctverak, a Czech national on his second visit to this town, is one of them. Ctverak "cares for Vrindavan" as he proudly displays the message on his T-shirt. “I love Krishna and that's why I am here," he says. But isn't he surprised with all-pervasive filth? “It's not just confined to Vrindavan. The entire India is dirty,“ he quips. This country probably is the only place where people throw garbage on roads, he says. “You keep your house clean but roads dirty.“
Pradeep Mathur, however, puts the ball in the Modi government's court. “It's absolutely shameful that the holy city stinks," says the local MLA from Congress.Hema Malini is an utter failure and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has flopped in Mathura and Vrindavan, he adds.When asked why he has not done anything to fix the civic mess in Vrindavan, the MLA washes his hands off by blaming the municipal bodies. “They [municipal bodies] are run by the BJP and the state government is run by the Samajwadi Party. I have tried my best and even built roads from my funds. But the government is not run by Congress."
People like Jagannath Poddar believe in acting on their own rather than waiting for politicians. A social activist, Poddar runs an NGO called Friends of Vrindavan, which deals with waste management, cleaning of streets, tree plantation and other environmental issues. Although he wants to take a lead in solving the civic mess, he has been inhibited by paucity of funds.
“We have already overstretched ourselves financially," he says. But that has not deterred Poddar from continuing with his activism. “Vrindavan needs a Facebook revolution and social media can be an effective way to tackle the problem,“ says Poddar who has been canvassing for a new landfill site apart from the need to cover the drains, effective functioning of sewage plants and a ban on polythene in Vrindavan.
Poddar has been working closely with Shukla to enable him to continue with his activism. It was because of a PIL filed by Shukla in 2010 that the High Court passed an order to protect 369 trees on the Vrindavan-Chhatikara and Mathura-Vrindavan roads, which would have been axed to make the roads wider.
“Log kehte hain main pagal pandit hoon lekin main Krishna aur Radha ki bhoomi ko nasht nahin hone dunga [People call me mad priest but I can't allow the land of Krishna and Radha to be destroyed],“ says Shukla.