People of Vrindavan wait for MP Hema Malini to join them in cleaning streets

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-yearold 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 billboards 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."

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-05-17/news/62276970_1_garbage-disposal-site-landfill-site-modi-govt