Anjali Neeraj remembers the specific frustration: a picnic spot that locals had loved for years, its water clean and its shade deep, slowly buried under bottles, wrappers and plastic bags left behind each weekend. “We could not just walk past it,” she is seen saying in an Instagram video of the moment that prompted her and her sister Ruchi to act.
In 2023, the two sisters founded the Vasudha Kalyan United Foundation in Hazaribagh, and began what would become one of Jharkhand’s most sustained community-led campaigns against plastic waste in its water bodies.
By mid-2025, a news report put the total waste removed at 50,000 kg.
The foundation’s own latest figure, shared in connection with The Better India’s Civic Sense Heroes campaign, is more than 80,000 kg — drawn from rivers, lakes, ponds and waterfalls across the state.
That number is the result of hundreds of volunteer clean-ups, not a single event.
How one local clean-up spread across Jharkhand
The sisters started where the problem was most visible: the reservoirs and water bodies around Hazaribagh. Their method was straightforward — invite residents, bring tools, remove the waste, and make sure people could see how much had accumulated in places they thought of as their own.
A 2025 report noted that the foundation had mobilised local communities to participate directly rather than waiting for municipal workers or government agencies to act.
That approach has since carried them beyond their home city. Recent clean-up drives have taken in Tamasin Waterfall, Tilaiya Dam and Hazaribagh Jheel — sites that the Jharkhand Tourism Department lists among the state’s water-based destinations, precisely the kinds of scenic spots that attract the most visitors and, with them, the most casual littering.
Volunteers collect discarded bottles, wrappers and plastic waste during one of Vasudha Kalyan United Foundation’s community-led clean-up drives. Photograph: (The Better India)
Tamasin, with its tiered cascade through forest, and Tilaiya, whose reservoir and surrounding hills are described on the tourism department’s pages as a popular picnic destination, offer a particular kind of irony: the landscapes people travel to see are the ones accumulating what they leave behind.
What happens after the volunteers leave?
Every site the sisters work on makes the same demand: come back.
A water body cleaned on Sunday is not immune to the following weekend.
Anjali and Ruchi have been clear about this from the beginning, which is why their work has two tracks running in parallel.
One is the clean-up itself — physical, visible, measurable in tonnes. The other is awareness: talks in schools, conversations at village gatherings, presence at the picnic spots where littering happens most.
The logic is the same as the one that has made similar efforts work elsewhere. The Better India has reported on initiatives like Chinu Kwatra’s Beach Warriors in Mumbai, where nine years of weekly clean-ups on four beaches have shifted not just the volume of waste removed but what volunteers and bystanders believe about whose responsibility a shared space is. The change, as Kwatra has put it, is slow — but it shows up.
For the Vasudha Kalyan United Foundation, the awareness component is an attempt to close the gap between the clean-up and the next weekend. Schools and visitor sites are where the conversation can reach people before their habits are set for the day’s outing, not after.
Where rules end, citizen action begins
India prohibited identified single-use plastics with high litter potential from 1 July 2022 under the Plastic Waste Management Rules. The country generated about 4.14 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2022–23, according to figures the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change cited in Parliament.
The sisters’ clean-up campaign has expanded from Hazaribagh to water bodies including Tamasin Waterfall and Tilaiya Dam across Jharkhand. Photograph: (The Better India)
The Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board has described plastic waste management in the state as a challenge that requires coordinated effort across communities, agencies and local enforcement.
Rules create the framework. What fills the gap between a rule and a changed behaviour is usually a group of people willing to make the problem visible, again and again, until it becomes impossible to ignore.
That is, precisely, what Anjali and Ruchi have spent two years doing.
80,000 kg removed. But that is not the finish line
More than 80,000 kg is a striking figure. It is also, in its own way, a reminder of what keeps arriving. Every bottle, every wrapper, every discarded packet on a riverbank represents a choice someone made in a space they shared with everyone else — and the work of two sisters who decided that was not good enough.
The clean-up drives will continue. So will the awareness sessions. The Jharkhand rivers and waterfalls that have been cleared once will need clearing again. What Anjali and Ruchi are really building, one water body and one conversation at a time, is the case that responsibility for a public space does not end when the picnic does.
The kilograms removed are the measure of what has been done. The measure of whether it has worked will be how much less there is to remove next time.
About the campaign
This story is part of The Better India’s #CivicSenseRevolution, a year-long nationwide campaign celebrating citizens who take responsibility for the places and communities we all share. From cleaner streets and safer roads to restored lakes and public spaces, we’re looking for everyday Indians turning civic sense into action. Know someone doing work like this? Nominate your Civic Sense Hero here.
Sources
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‘Sisters Lead Fight In H’bag, Mobilise Locals To Clean Reservoirs’: by Vishvendu Jaipuriar for The Times of India, Published on 5 June 2025, The Times of India source
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‘Parliament Question: Plastic Waste In The Country’: by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for Press Information Bureau, Published on 12 December 2024, Press Information Bureau source
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‘Plastic Wastes’: by Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board, Updated on 6 August 2026, Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board source
