By Rahul Vaishnavi
New Delhi, Sep 8 (IANS): Without waiting for negligent municipal corporations to act, several do-it-yourself groups have taken it upon themselves to clean up the national capital - and even recharge water bodies - with active participation from its civic-minded citizens.
Collecting garbage, removing posters from walls and even building urinals, groups like Basic Shit, Delhi Rising and Let's Do It Delhi are doing it all to ensure a clean and stench-free Delhi.
"There are many spots in the city where you are forced to cover your nose because of the stinking smell of urine. We are focussing on such places and building cheap urinals there," Ashwani Aggarwal of Basic Shit told IANS.
Formed in December 2013, the group has so far set up two urinals in Delhia near the AIIMS Metro station and Hauz Khas with the help of funds collected from residents and shopkeepers.
"If people can't stop urinating in public we can only build more toilets," said Aggarwal, an arts graduate who builds the cost-effective urinals using funnels or plastic cans attached to pipes which are connected to a nearby sewer.
According to Aggarwal, the group soon plans to build 20 more urinals around the city.
Other groups like Delhi Rising, which regularly carries out cleaning drives, ask people to report a particular spot that has been neglected by the municipality.
"People have to give their personal details as well as the spot's location on our community page on Facebook and we then organize a spot fix. They have to join as a volunteer and if possible bring as many people as they can," said a member of the group that operates across the national capital.
"At the same time we create an event on our homepage so that people from anywhere in the city can join."
In fact, it's the ever increasing number of volunteers that are fuelling these groups, said Anita Bhargava of Let's Do It! Delhi, which earlier used to carry out sanitation drives but now focusses on bringing about systematic changes to better address the issue of maintaining cleanliness, again across the capital wherever required.
"I feel it is more important to make sure that once a place is clean, it stays that way and for that we need the residents of the city to step in," Bhargava told IANS.
"After selecting a particular area, we talk to the civic agency concerned and set a deadline for completing the work," she added.
A group of senior citizens are dedicatedly working towards solving Dwarka's water woes by planning to revive around 40 water bodies by October 2015.
Started by a handful of morning walkers in 2010 with an aim to beautify the DDA parks in the locality, the "Sukh Dukh Ke Sathi Sanstha" gradually decided to solve Dwarka's water crisis and today boasts of some 200 members.
"There is acute shortage of potable water in Dwarka. Water bodies are a good source to harvest the rain water and re-charge the ground water. It substantially increases availability and quality of the water in the surrounding area," P.B. Mishra, the NGO's secretary, told IANS.
"Once the water bodies are identified they are linked with the nearest stormwater drains through channels so that whenever it rains, the water is diverted to the water bodies by the principle of gravity," he added.
According to Mishra, a former Lt. Governor of Delhi, Tejender Khanna, had formed a committee which included the members of the NGO with a mandate to revive the water bodies.
"This committee has identified about 40 water bodies in Dwarka. we plan to revive them by October 2015," said Mishra, adding that support from the concerned government agencies, mainly the DDA, was the major concern.
"After a lot of persuasion we have been able to get some support from the DDA. A lot needs to be done to change general attitude of these departments to fulfill the mandate of the committee," said Mishra.