Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna is a project for making a difference to our city, Delhi-NCR. It started as an initiative of The Art of Living, but now, is a full blown Citizens' Action Plan. Dozens of NGOs, Companies and Organizations have already joined as Partners.
Delhi-NCR is not clean – India is at the centre of the world today, poised for global leadership in future – we can’t remain dirty, something needs to happen. Commonwealth Games are in October, and it would be great to present a clean city to the world.
Over the next few weeks, we expect to have 100+ partners, who will together inspire A Million citizens to come out and clean Delhi in September 2010. Everyone will be contributing – people and leaders from all sectors of the society will be joining, including the NGOs; Corporate and Business community; Resident Welfare Associations; Defence and Allied Services; Schools, Colleges, Universities; Leaders from Arts, Culture, Music, Literature, Theatre and Films; Media, Government, and every citizen of Delhi.
We plan to begin with Yamuna first, our sacred river. Yamuna is immensely important for the economic, ecological and basic needs of the region and its people – but, over the years, it has become one of the most endangered waterways in India. Numerous attempts have not had much success, and there is confusion about what will happen in future.
We need to join hands and increase the awareness about cleaning of the river Yamuna – more than half of 3.6 billion tonnes of sewerage produced in Delhi everyday flows into Yamuna untreated! And we are dependent on Yamuna for more than 60% of the water needed by the Delhi region. We are organizing an event on March 7, 2010 in Delhi where the citizens and leaders from all sectors and areas would be participating. This will be followed by a massive cleaning of the banks of Yamuna on March 14 by the citizens to demonstrate that ‘it is possible to make a difference’.
This is a program of national importance, which would perhaps be an inflection point for India – the citizens coming out and taking responsibility for their surroundings and this would spur the administration to be more effective too.
