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The green warrior

  • 30/12/2001

V S Yadav, a retired colonel, just strives for one thing: cleanliness. Around two years ago he had declared a war on garbage by starting an organisation called the Hawk Eye Environmental Service that runs a waste management programme. "It was quite frustrating to see piles of garbage lying all around. But neither the government nor the residents seem to care. Therefore, I decided to start my programme,' recalls Yadav.

His commitment is such that he even took his mission to the Tihar jail, where he spent three months a year ago, when implicated in an alleged murder case. During his stay, he reformed the way garbage was managed in one of the jails. By encouraging a handful of inmates, he started an in-house garbage management programme that proved to be both economically viable as well as ecofriendly. "At the very onset, I knew the programme would work. The inmates got motivated when told about the economic benefits,' said O P Mishra, superintendent of the jail.

Yadav's organisation based in Shankar Vihar locality of Delhi Cantonment area runs on a no profit no loss basis, catering to almost 1,000 households of the locality. "Previously, when Municipal Corporation of Delhi was collecting the garbage from our area, the situation was pathetic. But now, Yadav's programme has made our area absolutely clean,' said Sudhir Yadav, a resident of Shankar Vihar. Cleaning up Shankar Vihar proved to be helpful in other ways also: the locality is near the Indira Gandhi International Airport and the litter attracted birds that disturbed air traffic.

"I want to start similar kind of a programme for other localities. Many parts of Delhi stink. People need leadership and the government can provide them with the right kind of initiatives,' opines Yadav.

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