Street Plays And Clean-Ups: India's Culture Ministry Says 200,000 Joined Week-Long Drive

More than 270 events at temples, ghats, schools and heritage sites carried a message linking service to the upkeep of cultural sites

Image Source: @MinOfCultureGoI

More than two lakh people took part in a week of street plays, cleaning drives and public performances across India, the culture ministry said on Monday, in a campaign that tied the upkeep of heritage sites to the idea of national service.

The initiative, called Seva Hi Sanskriti, or service is culture, ran from 17 to 24 September. The ministry said more than 270 activities were held, including street theatre, rangoli-making, cleanliness drives and collective singing of Vande Mataram, India's national song.

Events took place at government office complexes, schools and colleges, parks, markets, temples, riverside ghats and heritage sites. Two themes ran through them: heritage and development, and what the ministry called a new story of cleanliness.

The campaign was run through three national arts bodies, the Sangeet Natak Akademi for music and theatre, the Lalit Kala Akademi for the visual arts and the National School of Drama, together with the country's seven zonal cultural centres, which cover the north, north-east, east, west, south, south-central and north-central regions.

Street plays were used to carry stories of India's cultural achievements directly to the public. The ministry said the aim was to encourage a greater sense of social responsibility, particularly among young people and students, and to make the case that keeping public spaces clean and looking after cultural sites are both forms of national service.

Seva Hi Sanskriti formed part of a wider programme called Seva Sankalp Abhiyan 2026, a month-long service campaign launched on 17 September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday, and running to 17 October.

The emphasis on cleanliness places the initiative within a decade of government campaigning on the subject. Swachh Bharat, the national sanitation mission launched in 2014, has made public cleanliness a recurring theme of official messaging, and drives of this kind are now a regular feature of the calendar.

The ministry did not give a breakdown of participation by state or by type of activity, or say how the figure of two lakh was arrived at.