First, Green Team from Ahinsa Khand 2, and now United We Stand from Vaibhav Khand. Residents and AOA members join forces to give their neighbourhoods a facelift.
Members of United We Stand at work
Indirapuram is witnessing the encouraging rise of a strong civil society in the form of pressure groups — first being the Green Team from Ahinsa Khand 2 and now United We Stand from Vaibhav Khand.
Residents, along with AOA members of Vaibhav Khand societies, have now joined forces to give their neighbourhoods a facelift.
United We Stand, as the group calls itself, conducted its first cleaning-cum-anti-pollution drive today. A few months back, a similar neighbourhood welfare group named Green Team was formed by societies of Ahinsa Khand 2.
Speaking to City Spidey, Anuja Chadda, resident of GC Grand, Vaibhav Khand, explained, “The group has been formed to organise the participation of local residents in the welfare of the neighbourhood. Our group involves residents and AOAs from almost all the societies in Vaibhav Khand area, and is dedicated towards keeping the neighbourhood clean.”
Taking cue from the government’s efforts to fight air pollution, the members today — besides cleaning the footpaths — also sprinkled water on the green patches that run along the boundary walls of their society. “We sprinkled the trees with water to lower air pollution around our society. The recent smog and dust pollution had covered the plants in a thick grey layer. But after the sprinkling, the leaves are green again,” said Nidhi Trikha, another GC Grand resident.
Jigyasu Pant, a resident of Gaur Green City, said the members were planning to regularise these drives and conduct them every weekend to ensure a steady participation. “We will select patches of roads and streets for cleaning up, and also schedule our coming drives,” he added.
City Spidey also got in touch with the members of the Green Team to see how they have fared so far.
The members felt that pointing fingers at each other did not solve the problems, while general participation is the solution in most cases. “We have achieved much, but there are still a lot of speed bumps. But certainly, all our drives have achieved something — no matter how small,” said Jayati Jain, a Green Team member.
So, could emergence of such action groups mean failure of the government?
While some said that it is more of a growing sense of social responsibility, others maintained that such pressure groups can go a long way in improving the services being provided by the government and get things going in general.
