From a successful city-wide cleanup to women empowerment — top social stories this week
This week, SocialStory brings you the tale of a city’s residents who joined hands to clean their streets and tales of women standing up for themselves and for others.
A city once branded by its garbage piles, overflowing landfills, and unclean streets is now one of cleanest cities in the country, thanks to the efforts of its citizens. On the other hand, one man’s initiative to clean the streets has inspired many others.
Then, as one brave woman stopped an assault, injuring herself in the process, another ran away from home to escape a forced marriage and achieved success in life by becoming a PCS officer seven years later.
Here are the top Social Stories of the week:
This city in Haryana rose to 11th place from 850 in Swachh Survekshan ranking
Residents and students participating in a street rally to promote cleanliness.
Charkhi Dadri, located in southern Haryana, 110 kilometres from New Delhi, was ranked 11th in the Swachh Survekshan cleanliness survey this year. This was a huge jump compared to its position in 2019, which was 850.
The city, which was once characterised by piles of garbage around every street corner and landfills overflowing with toxic garbage, is now setting high standards for hygiene and tidiness.
The municipal authority of Charkhi Dadri, along with fellows from Ashoka University, implemented several measures to make public places spick and span in the city.
An IIM-Bangalore alum is empowering rural children in Sundarbans
Biplab interacting with a few of the children.
While India houses about 472 million children below the age of 18 years, only a small stratum of this population has access to quality pedagogy, owing to the poor state of education in the rural parts of India.
When 48-year-old Biplab Das found out about the dwindling learning outcomes of children in the islands across Sundarbans, he decided to step in and take a shot at improving it. He established Kishalay Foundation, along with two of his friends Soumitra Dandapat and Jhilam Nandi, in 2013.
Since Biplab wanted to focus on laying the foundation for young minds, he started with interventions and programmes at the primary school level. In fact, he also quit his job to dedicate all his time towards building independent learning hubs for kids between the age groups of three and eight years.
Kolkata woman risks life to rescue a fellow woman from molestation
Nilanjana Chatterjee (Image: The Telegraph)
While returning from a social gathering with her husband Deep Satpathi and daughter Shreyasi Chatterjee, Nilanjana heard a distress call from a woman in a car in the Anandapur area of South Kolkata and stopped their car in front of it.
Nilanjana reached out to help the woman while the man behind the wheels fled the scene, running over Nilanjana’s left leg. She suffered fractures in the Tibia and Fibula and was immediately rushed to the hospital.
Kolkata residents were impressed by the braveheart’s actions, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who said that the state government would support Nilanjana in her difficult times.
Meet Ripu Daman Bevli, who went on to become the ‘Plogman of India’
Ripu Daman Bevli
Runner and fitness enthusiast, Ripu Daman Bevli has been following his heart to clean up the nation while inspiring others to join the cause. What was an initially a clean-up session after a marathon, turned into regular activity for Ripu, who also inspired others into doing this cooldown activity post their race.
Seeing the gradual positive impact of the practice, Ripu decided to quit his tech career to dedicate his life to the mission of making India ‘litter-free.’ And, in no time, he came to be known as the ‘Plogman of India’. (Plogging is a Swedish term that combines picking up litter and jogging)
Meerut woman who ran away from home becomes PCS officer seven years later
Sanju Rani Verma (Image: News18)
Sanju Rani Verma from Meerut chose to follow her dreams of having a career over marriage. In 2013, the then 28-year-old Sanju decided to run away from home after her mother died and her family started to pressurise her into getting married. At the time, she was pursuing her Master’s from Delhi University at the time.
Seven years later, when the UPPSC-2018 exams were announced last week, Sanju passed with flying colours. She has other ambitious plans and wants to crack the civil service exams and become a divisional magistrate.
The 35-year-old still wishes to support her family financially and hopes those who disrespected her choices, would now respect her as she becomes a government officer.
Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta