Villages in Assam’s Khumtai Assembly constituency are working day in and out for claiming a top in the ‘Inter-Village Tea Garden Cleanliness Competition’.
148 villages and 24 tea gardens have participated in the event since the competition started and have been scrutinised by 18 judges, journalists, environmentalists who after ranking the villages submitted the results to the local MLA Mrinal Saikia whose brainchild the competition is.
“Two of the villages in Khumtai — Jugibari and Melamora — have had tourists coming in since parks have been developed around lakes there. But I want to make all of Khumtai a destination for rural tourism. But since we don’t have hills or a river here, I want cleanliness to be our capital,” said Saikia to The Indian Express, who wants footfall in Assam’s villages to rise just like the ‘Asia’s cleanest village’ in Meghalaya.
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The winning village will get a one-km concrete road while the runner-up will get a development plan for their village worth Rs 10 lakh. The third, fourth and fifth prize are worth Rs 8 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh respectively. The winner will be declared on March 17 by Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma.
A shopkeeper in Bosa village, Bipul Baruah told the publication that if his village won, they would opt for the road to be made from the village centre to the local primary school.
“We really need a road there. Children use that path every day and it gets really muddy during the rainy season. If we win any of the other prizes, we can use the money to build a clubhouse and to build a boundary for the common lake here,” said Baruah.
This cleanliness drive has all villagers focusing on the beauty of their village despite their busy schedules. Owing to lack of time and other commitments, some villagers get to their cleaning duties as early as 5:30 am. The main focus of the drive has been on plastic.
“A good thing that has come out of this is that all the stockpiled garbage has been cleared. But now the cleanliness has to be sustained. The biggest success of this has been the people’s involvement. They got so enthusiastic about it that even I was taken by surprise,” said Saikia.
Along with this being a great initiative for keeping the villages clean, it has also created jobs for bamboo artisans as the waste is collected in bamboo baskets.