Kota's Youth Are Cleaning Up Garbage From Lakes & Streets To Save Their City

Gloves snap over eager hands as volunteers move along the edge of a lake, their garbage bags rustling in the breeze. 

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Some kneel near the lake’s edge, scooping out layers of soggy plastic, while others tie wide nets to poles, lowering them into the murky water and pulling them back heavy with wrappers, bottles, and rotting debris, as if they are fishing for waste instead of fish. 

It’s an unusual sight: young people turning a polluted water body back into its clean glory. This lake in Kota, Rajasthan, has long drawn visitors, yet neglect has left it choked with filth. Now, the clatter of collected rubbish hitting the sacks signals the beginning of its revival.

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Youth at the heart of change

This energy comes from Kota Community, an initiative that has grown into one of the city’s most visible grassroots movements for cleanliness. 

What started as a small circle of concerned residents has expanded into a network of students and working professionals who meet regularly, often on Sunday, to clean streets, historical monuments, ancient stepwells and water bodies. 

Their guiding motto, ‘Pehal Ek Kadam’ (the first step), reflects the belief that every transformation begins with one action in the right direction. 

The spark for the movement came from a personal moment. Recalling how it all began, co-founder of Kota Community Gulshan Manwani said, “I hail from Banswara, a small city in Rajasthan, and shifted to Kota in 2020. On one fine evening in 2023, when my wife and I were roaming around Kota Barrage, a dam located on the Chambal River, we saw heaps of garbage lying around.”

The scene refused to leave him. What began as an uneasy evening walk soon turned into a quiet determination. Manwani and his wife, Mayuri, decided they would clean the spot themselves and put up a simple photo for a cleanliness drive on their private Instagram page — the page that would later become Kota Community. 

They were thrilled when they got responses from four to five people expressing interest in the cleanliness drive. Since then, they have held multiple such drives across the city.

Today, Kota Community coordinates with municipal authorities so that the waste collected during drives is transported for proper disposal and composting, ensuring their labour leads to lasting results. 

Talking about expanding the scope of the cleanliness drives, Manwani said, “We realised that organising these drives should not be limited to markets and colonies, so we shifted to holy places like temples, where litter today is more.”

Cleaning more than just streets

Over the past three years, Kota Community has organised 75 drives across 30 temples and 45 public spaces, steadily reclaiming corners of the city that had been surrendered to neglect. 

The sight of volunteers scrubbing stone steps, clearing clogged stepwells and hauling dripping nets from lakes can reshape how residents see their own relationship with public spaces. 

Such movements can take root in any city when people choose participation over indifference. As Kota Community’s motto reminds us, it all begins with a ‘pehal’ — that first step taken with resolve. 

Sources

‘Rajasthan’s Kota Community leads grassroot cleanliness movement’: by Archita Lakhotia for Media India Group, Published on 9 January 2026