Eight months of working in landfills? Bittu Tabahi again finds the Ajnar river choked with garbage

Surendra Singh Choudhary, the 20-year-old known online as Bittu Tabahi, who has drawn widespread attention for cleaning up Madhya Pradesh’s Ajnar river largely single-handedly, shared a disheartening update about the river on his Instagram account on Tuesday.

In a video, Tabahi showed the current state of the Ajnar river in Rajgarh district of Madhya Pradesh, saying that his eight months of hard work had been wasted. He highlighted the disappointing contrast with its condition a few weeks ago, when the river was clean. As of Tuesday, it was once again covered with plastic bags and garbage.

Eight months of lost work: Bittu Tabahi

Tabahi, who last month earned praise from many people, including those far beyond his city, for cleaning up the rivers largely on his own, has constantly highlighted the recurring problem of river pollution and the lack of accountability on the part of citizens. In two days, he shared two videos highlighting the dire state of the river. The videos came weeks after he shared another video showing the banks of the Ajnar river completely clean.

For the first time, Tabahi cleaned the river for almost eight months, pulling tons of garbage out of it, without any support from the authorities or any fancy equipment. However, after seeing the river polluted again, he continued to clean it, pulling out the garbage bags, one by one. In his video, he also points out that although he is not a strong swimmer, he cautiously continues his efforts to clean up the Ajnar River.

He also asked people to share suggestions online to help him remove trash from the river faster and more efficiently.

Reaction on social networks

After Tabahi’s video, several people praised his efforts on social media and applauded him for his courage to clean the river again. While one user wrote: “That’s an awful lot of rubbish floating in the water under that bridge! It must be frustrating to deal with it every time but please don’t give up. Your hard work deserves so much recognition,” another offered advice and suggested wearing appropriate clothing for this type of cleaning, including special shoes and special trousers.

A third user highlighted the root cause of the problem: “Talk to the Municipal Corporation and get fined for dumping garbage here. Otherwise it will happen again.”

Who is Bittu Tabahi?

Choudhary, a resident of Biaora in Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district, shares videos of his cleaning work on Instagram, recording how he removes plastic, algae and other waste from the Ajnar River.

Reports say that he started the initiative in January this year and cleared the accumulated garbage from stretches of the river. Digital content creator KR Talks claimed that Choudhary spent approx ₹30 thousand for work.

He has previously received an award from industrialist Anand Mahindra and also received a job offer from Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of the Dutch environmental organization The Ocean Cleanup.