The Raipur Bunch of fools
“Politicians are not worth it”, “it’s all over in this country”, “government is sleeping”, municipality just wants to collect taxes” etc, etc aren’t these comments commonly heard? We are living in a country of over a billion people, we are not only an oversized country, but very assorted in nature. There is nothing common across the country. Right from geographic conditions, infrastructure, living standards, food, language, education. One thing is common and that is people are just not bothered about hygiene. The mindset is that ‘somebody else will clean it, it is somebody’s job’. We just don’t care for our surroundings, we think we don’t own this city, this country.
But, sometimes in the mad crowd we find some gems, there are exceptions always. In Raipur there is a bunch of guys who work really hard to make sure that their city is clean and looks endearing. This group of youngsters call themselves as ‘Bunch of Fools ‘and are working towards a cleaner city and cleaner India. Their mission is cleanliness in the city. These guys select the dirtiest patches in the city, take picture of the spot with all dirt and garbage, and they clean up the area. After cleanup they again take a pictures and put it on their social media page. Thus they call themselves spot-fixers of Raipur. And this group consists of businessmen, professionals, teachers and elderly citizens in it. We “educated” people feel cleaning streets and chowks is not our job, and the so called educated people don’t feel shy while littering the streets.
Why do they call themselves ‘bunch of fools’? The group consists of about 30-35 active members who believe in the mission of keeping the city cleaner and making its looks brighter. They invest their time, money and energy in doing so. They have bought equipment for collecting garbage, cleaning, washing and coloring walls and dustbins. For doing this occasionally they are called “bewakoof” which mean fools and hence they called themselves ‘bunch of fools’. From railway station’s litter zone to Fafadih’s dump-yard, the youths have given these places a makeover by converting them into waiting zones and cricket pitch.
Eight school friends got together and started the good work in October, 2014. The group works on Sundays and on holidays from morning 6am till 9 am. They select unattended spots in the city. The group has a research team that monitors the place for few days. They have found that people dither littering on spots that look clean and do not throw garbage there any longer. The Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh recently launched the website of this group. The group uses social media not for the purpose of publicity, but for having valued inputs from friends all over the world and creating awareness among people. Bunch of fool followers don’t believe in the blame game or accusing anyone…….they do their cleaning jobs inexorably without making any noise.
All of us wish to achieve many things in life, without any action our wishes remain as just wishes. We curse our fate, misfortune, others, the government and every second person for the miseries faced by us. A group like this exemplifies the proverb “where there is a will, there is a way.” Kudos to the “bunch of fools.”
