At the edge of Jait Sagar Lake in Kota, the morning begins with the chatter of a group of young volunteers moving along the waterline near Sukh Mahal, the 18th-century palace once associated with Rudyard Kipling’sKim.
Some crouch near the steps, pulling soggy packets and bottles from the lakebed. Others drag nets through dark water thick with floating waste.
For the volunteers of Kota Community, this is not a symbolic clean-up. It is an attempt to rescue Rajasthan’s relationship with water.
Across Rajasthan, lakes, baoris (stepwells), ponds, and ghats once determined where settlements could survive. In a state where water has always shaped daily life, these structures were engineered as systems of survival as much as architecture. Today, many lie abandoned under layers of plastic, sewage, and neglect.
Kota’s youth are trying to reverse that decline, one clean-up drive at a time.
Cleaning the water, reclaiming the city
The recent drive at Jait Sagar and Sukh Mahal brought together volunteers from Kota Community and Kota Hike. Gloves snapped over eager hands as students and working professionals spent hours clearing litter from the lakefront and nearby public spaces.
On some weekends, volunteers clean the banks of the Chambal River. On others, they clear clogged stepwells, remove debris from temple premises, arrange water and grain for birds during Rajasthan’s harsh summers, or persuade residents to stop using plastic bags.
Rajasthan’s forgotten water structures
The work carries a larger urgency.
According to government and environmental studies, Rajasthan’s traditional water bodies have been shrinking under rapid urbanisation, encroachment, and pollution.
Several historic stepwells across the state have either dried up or turned into dumping grounds over the years.
For centuries, these baoris served as social and ecological centres. They stored rainwater, cooled surrounding neighbourhoods, and became gathering spaces for travellers and communities escaping the desert heat. Many also housed local deities and temples along their steps.
Modern piped water systems gradually pushed them into disuse. Neglect did the rest.
According to the state’s Water Bodies Census (2018–19), Rajasthan has 16,939 water bodies, but nearly 21 per cent are no longer in use because of drying, siltation, and structural neglect.
In Jaipur’s Mansagar Lake, urban surveys have estimated that over 40 per cent of the lake’s banks have been altered or encroached upon without environmental clearance. At the same time, pollution and solid waste continue to choke inflow channels.
A recent National Green Tribunal observation on Rajasthan’s Chandlai Lake also warned that rapid urbanisation, illegal construction, and untreated waste discharge are placing historic water bodies under “continuous and unrelenting stress”.
The volunteers cleaning Jait Sagar know they cannot solve the crisis alone. But they believe visibility matters.
When residents watch young people wading into polluted water to pull out rubbish by hand, it changes how public neglect is seen. A clogged stepwell no longer appears invisible.
Youth at the centre of change
Over the past three years, Kota Community has organised around 75 drives across 30 temples and 45 public spaces in and around the city.
The volunteers are mostly students, office-goers, and residents who gather regularly — often on Sundays — carrying gloves, sacks, and long-handled nets.
Their efforts now coordinate with municipal authorities so collected waste is transported for disposal and composting instead of being left roadside after drives.
The impact is not always dramatic.
Stepwells that have been clogged for decades cannot be restored in a single morning.
But the repeated act of showing up has begun to create a sense of civic ownership.
In a country where conversations around pollution often collapse into blame, Kota Community operates differently. Its members insist public spaces survive only when people treat them as a shared responsibility rather than somebody else’s problem.
The volunteers return home dirty, exhausted, and smelling faintly of lake water.
But the next Sunday, they show up again.
