College chants clean mantra

If you like throwing garbage on the streets, the BMM students of RD National College have only one thing to say to you — “Yeh sheher tere baap ka nahi hai (This city does not belong to your father)”. The students have initiated a campaign to protect and safeguard public property and public amenities in the city.

Tere Baap Ka Nahi Hai (TBKNH) is a social campaign that intends at encouraging all the Mumbaikars to follow a certain civic code. The campaign, with its unique activities, has already garnered huge support on various social networking websites, where many like-minded youngsters have joined this group and are creating awareness about safeguarding public property.

Last week, the team conducted a clean-up drive on the stretch from Elphinstone Road station to Lower Parel station. With the help of students from other colleges, the team freed the walls on this stretch of all unnecessary posters.

Ankur Mokal, a member of the TBKNH team, said, “We went around the city, mostly south Mumbai and Bandra. We spoke to random people to find out which place in this area they think is in the worst condition. The opinions of the respondents, attached with an application to immediately clean these areas, will be sent to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The stretch that we decided to clean was voted the dirtiest stretch, and hence we took charge ourselves and cleaned it.”

Other areas mentioned in the poll were Juhu beach, Bandstand, Sion and Andheri, among others.

The campaign is extremely active on the  social networking site, Facebook, where the group’s target audience, which is the youth, are most likely to be a part of the campaign. Amrit Raj, another team member, said, “We have made a page called Tere Baap Ka Nahi Hai, which caters to our agenda of maintaining and preserving public property. On this page, we post and share our print ads, videos, status updates, and also create interactive polls to obtain public opinion and help create awareness about the subject. The page has become very popular among youth.” You can take a look at the page on www.facebook.com/TereBaapKaNahiHai.

‘Tere Baap Ka Nahi Hai’ is powered by Dhinchak Mumbai — another youth initiative to talk about the city buzz. Amrit said, “We will be sponsored by Dhinchak Mumbai to continue the campaign even after college. This project has received great response and we want to continue it hoping for some change.”