Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday lauded India's first plogger, Ripudaman Belvi for taking the unique initiative to make India a litter-free and garbage-free place.
Addressing the citizen of the country during 57th episode of 'Mann ki Baat', Modi spoke to one of the special guests, Ripudaman who is making plogging popular across India and termed it as his 'devotion. Plogging is jogging while picking up litter.
Modi said that 130 crore Indians have also resolved to get rid of single-use plastic on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary. He firmly believes that the citizens would become a part of this campaign on October 2.
"Ripudaman Bevli is taking a unique initiative. He is doing plogging. It was a new word for me when I first heard it. Plogging has been used in foreign countries but in India, Ripudaman ji has made it quite popular," the Prime Minister said.
On a phone call with Modi during the radio programme, Bevli said, "I am a runner myself. When we go running in the morning, traffic and crowd are very less so at that time, garbage, trash and plastic are more visible. So, instead of cribbing and complaining, I thought of doing something. I started it with my running group in Delhi and took it to the entire country."
"We started a run and clean-up movement where we asked running groups to clear garbage after their workout session. We told them to start picking up garbage, plastic, as their cool-down-activity. When we are running and cleng up it adds a lot of exercise like squats, deep squats, lunges, forward bent so it becomes a holistic workout," he added.
He continued, "I would urge everyone to take three steps to make India a litter-free country. Step one, throw garbage in dustbin only. Step two, see garbage, pick it up, throw it in the dustbin and step three, If you don't see a dustbin, bring it home and segregate it into dry and wet west and give it to Municipality van next morning."
Speaking about the holistic verdict to be given by Modi on October 2 Bevli said that if India will become garbage-free, it will surely become plastic-free as well.
Bevli conducted a campaign in Kochi on September 5 namely 'Run to Make India Litter-Free' and as a part of the campaign, he aimed to run for thousands of kilometres and clean the areas, covering 50 cities.
"Everyone told me, it is probably the longest clean-up drive in the world. Along with it, we have created a very cool hashtag for social media namely #PLASTICUPVAAS--where we are asking people to tell us about that one single-use thing which they completely will remove from their daily life," Bevli said.
Bevli has completed as many as 300 plogging drives in the last two years across the country.
Plogging is a combination of jogging with picking up litter. As a workout, it provides variation in body movements by adding bending, squatting and stretching to the main action of running, hiking, or walking.
( With inputs from ANI )