NAGPUR@2025: MAKING CITY A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN

Can you imagine a Nagpur where everybody follows all traffic rules? A Nagpur where people don’t litter streets and also segregate wet/dry garbage before disposing. A Nagpur where clean and numerous wayside public toilets are available. A Nagpur with clean lakes with a thriving marine ecosystem. A Nagpur with well-maintained public gardens and recreation areas.
Well, that’s what the Nagpur@2025 campaign hopes to achieves.
A concerted effort between an economic development association, civic authorities, police department and different NGOs aims to achieve specific goals for Nagpur over the next three years, which will ultimately make the city a “better place to live in”.
Shivkumar Rao, former president of Vidarbha Economic Development Council (VED) said, “We always hear people speak something negative about Nagpur or they compare Indore’s cleanliness with our city. So when I was the president of VED, we decided that apart from focussing on investments for Vidarbha, we need efforts to bring about an all-round change in Nagpur. All of the different groups working for city’s development needed to come together to make it better.”
The vision was simple. Identify specific areas in which improvements can be brought about within a specified timeline. And it came down to five areas with a target of three years (see box).
But such a massive campaign, spread over three years, couldn’t be done only by VED and NGOs.
So the first port-of-call for Rao was the Nagpur Municipal Corporation.
Radhakrishnan B, municipal commissioner, said, “They came up with a very good initiative and I appreciate the efforts put by VED into planning this. Also, it’s commendable that other NGOs from the city have joined hands to make Nagpur@2025 a success. From our side, we will provide them with all the help possible.”
He added that in a “functional democracy, citizen parternship is a key for success of civic projects”.
Nimish Sutaria, one of the two convenor of Nagpur@2025, said, “We are not treating this as an event. It’s a sustained effort over a longer period of time where we aim to change people’s mindset. Let’s take example of litter in public areas. It’s basically garbage which some citizen has thrown and then we blame NMC for it. So the change has to begin from within.”
He added that citizens too are eager to join hands. “We have already started the project and everywhere people are willing to lend a hand,” said Sutaria.
Anasuya Kale-Chhabrani, the other convenor, too is optimistic about the campaign. “It’s a wonderful effort to bring every stakeholder together and work with the authorities so that ultimately our city benefits,” she said.
While cleanliness, beautification, traffic management awareness campaigns are not new to the city, Nagpur@2025 has taken a different approach to it. The campaign is being run in a very professional manner with the group hiring two full time employees to help in better coordination. A specific office space too has been identified for the staffers and sponsors are being brought on board to help with the finances.
The expertise of different NGOs, cooperation of authorities and the new professional approach to the campaign promises to ensure a different result for Nagpur@2025 campaign.
The campaign’s concept note clearly mentions it wants citizens to “install sense of pride and ownership” when it comes to the city.
Sandeep Agrawal, from I-Clean, said that unless the ‘ownership’ feeling is there, one cannot expect a major change. “If 27 lakh citizens decide to break traffic signal and throw garbage, then neither NMC nor city police can do anything. If only citizens feel that they should themselves be an active player in such a process, then the city can truly achieve its goal to be the best in all civic related parameters,” said Agrawal.
Nagpur@2025 has already sprung into action with activities under three verticals already underway. In the waste management vertical, they have identified 14 black spots of which 12 have already been cleaned. Of these, beautification activity has been completed at one spot while it’s underway at three others.
Under the public toilet vertical, they have already redeveloped six public toilets. Under the public spaces and garden vertical, two locations have been identified for conservation and redevelopment, for which a detailed plan has been submitted to authorities.
Malhar Deshpande, core team member of Nagpur@2025, said their main strength is bringing on ‘heroes of Nagpur’ together. “We have so many NGOs and active citizens in Nagpur who have the best of intentions. What we are doing is bringin all of these people under one umberella to for a superhero sort of team for Nagpur,” said Deshpande.