Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini were the face of Swatch Bharat but the real hero is the waste queen of India

Adventures in an Ancient Land: Swatch Bharat

As a Silicon Valley-based professor on a sabbatical to distant places, I get privileged access to places, ideas, and people that many other travelers might not have. This is the first in a series of articles on my sabbatical travels to India to offer a glimpse into some of what I discovered

On 2nd October 2014, the Prime Minister of India launched a national movement to fulfill Gandhi’s vision of a clean and hygienic India, inviting everyone to join the Swachata Abhiyan. Many NGOs, celebrities from sports (Sania Mirza, Sachin Tendulkar, Mary Kom, etc.), and cinema (Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Priyanka Chopra, etc.) joined the campaign to inspire action for a clean nation, in time for Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary.

Celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini famously wielded brooms in public displays of cleaning up streets, as a way to motivate citizens to be better involved in this worthy mission. In the years following, on every visit to India, I saw signs for the Swacch Bharat on public-facing walls everywhere in Mumbai and Pune.

It was to be a befitting gift to the memory of the Father of the Nation who devoted his life to earning freedom from British rule.

Fast forward a few years, and sadly, on my visit in 2024, many public spaces remain as dirty as before. Sometimes dirt piles lay in heaps under signs with signs of Gandhi’s signature round-rimmed glasses announcing the Swatch Bharat campaign.

Yet, in some of the rural and remote parts that I visited this time, I found a clean Bharat. I also found hope in the story of one amazing woman, who is less visible, but who has single-handedly done more to clean up India than anyone else. A few years ago, she had her moment of fame on Amir Khan’s SatyamevJayate TV show where she was introduced as the waste queen of India.

The waste queen of India

Years before any public programs tackled India’s waste problem, Almitra Patel had traveled to many countries to find solutions to keeping cities clean, by literally visiting their garbage dumps.

When Almitra found that Indian cities did not have similar plans for disposing of waste, she filed a Public Interest Litigation, as a concerned citizen to hold the government accountable. She won landmark judgments that led to many cities adopting waste management systems.

Years later, India benefits from her efforts. Patel’s work is recognized among the rare individuals who work patiently behind the scenes to do the right thing. But her less known story. Her less-known story is inspiring to me and I was awed by my time spent with this octogenarian. Even in her retirement, she keeps more active than many other folk.

An inspiring hero

Almitra Patel was the first Indian woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. She was a successful businesswoman who, with her husband, set up and ran a complex industrial manufacturing business. She also founded a school for disadvantaged children.

My favorite discovery about Almitra is the farm she created on the outskirts of Bangalore when she relocated from urban Mumbai more than fifty years ago to raise her two daughters, surrounded by nature. She still lives there, even as Bangalore expands, and her farmland shrinks, because she has less capacity to care for it.

I visited her lovely home. A private forest with giant trees towers around the small farmhouse I slept on a bed by the window where a tall Gulmohar grew outside – so close, I might as well have woken up in a tree house.

The home is filled with art that appealed to me because it also served a utilitarian purpose. A door handle made from a tile by Badrinath, side tables with carvings, and inlay work by unknown artisans. The beautiful craftsmanship that surrounded me offered aesthetic delight at every moment I spent there.

Patel is a storehouse of knowledge about these crafts and artisans who created them in different parts of India. One item was literally a piece of wood that once served as a chopping board in a roadside dhaba that she asked the dhaba owner for.

The crafts reflect the commonplace lives of millions of India who create beauty, but who will never be a Wikipedia entry. India is an ancient land of living traditions, where history keeps alive by being reinvented in a relevant way for each generation. This is how India’s spirit and eternal wisdom are reflected in the practicalities of everyday life.

Almitra’s story

Almitra’s story too carries the weight of 800+ years of history. She is a Parsi, whose Zoroastrian ancestors were displaced from Persia and found shelter in India and blended with the local population. Tatas, Godrej, Boman Irani, Sam Manekshaw and Sam Bahadur of the recent film, are a testament to the Parsi community’s assimilation in India.

I loved my time with her. As I bid her farewell, she handed me a homemade lunch to carry on my onward travels. This endearing gesture was exactly like how my own family sends me off with homemade food as our dominant love language.

Almitra’s website offers resources for waste management that ordinary citizens can use. , For fun, you will find a book of poems she wrote over her travels.

https://www.almitrapatel.com/

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Published under International Cooperation with "Sindh Courier"