Two years ago, when Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was launched, we all were really excited, and there were several events to clean up our cities. However, the yawning gap between the enthusiasm to clean up the city and not knowing how to go about it, has led us back to square one.
It is the government’s responsibility to maintain public dustbins. However, it is easier to find a Pokémon than to find a public dustbin. You can’t blame the government too. When the govt tried maintaining public dustbins, petty thieves started stealing the dustbins and selling it at scrap shops.
To tackle the issue of “Non-availability of a Dustbins in India”, Keep India Clean was born. Pratik Shetty, had a simple idea
“What if, every local shop and every local restaurant in India maintained just 1 dustbin outside their place, wouldn’t India have enough dustbins”
Pratik is a social entrepreneur and his main focus is on edu-tech, however that’s where the problem lies. An entrepreneur is busy being concerned about his profits, an employee or a professional is busy being concerned with his next promotion and raise and the students (youth) are busy worrying about their exams.
Everyone is busy with their own lives. Cleaning your surroundings, cleaning India is actually a simple task but for that, people have to put a conscious effort to it. May be it is one of the reasons he depended on Jarvis, the artificial intelligence chatbot on Facebook messenger to be his assistant.
Related Read: How A Gurgaon Based Startup Is Silently Revolutionising The Swachh Bharath Campaign !
Jokes apart, Keep India Clean is a solo venture by Pratik and its success so far is completely dedicated to its volunteers who took part in the initiative. Keep India Clean started with a simple idea in April 2016, and within 4 months of its launch, it has spread across to 25 cities all across India, making it one of the fastest growing NGOs in the world.
They have over 100 volunteers that have participated in the Keep India Clean Movement. Keep India Clean has also partnered up with MNCs, the biggest of them being McDonalds, who have agreed to maintain 1 Dustbin outside their stores, all across India.
Here is a look at their timeline
Seeing the over-whelming response of the first initiative, Pratik has realized that the citizens of India are passionate about cleaning the country but don’t really know how to go about it.
Taking a broom and arranging a “Swachh Drive” is a good marketing event but does not create any long term impact.
Pratik has many initiatives lined up but for now he wants Keep India Clean to be a one stop platform for all the activities you can do to keep your surroundings clean and India beautiful.
