Mohor Singh started from his Vyas colony, where he would make announcements from his van appealing to people to come out and dump their garbage in his vehicle.
A government teacher in Bikaner who started with a small blue van and a public address system, to launch a cleanliness drive in his colony, now has more than 50 colonies joining his initiative in just over a year.
Mohor Singh started from his Vyas colony, where he would make announcements from his van appealing to people to come out and dump their garbage in his vehicle.
Mr Singh says the real reason for him taking the initiative was the tourists who visit Bikaner, and the impression that they carried about India.
"It makes me so ashamed, that people think India is a dirty country, so as I teacher and a responsible citizen I thought I may as well do my bit," Mr Singh told NDTV.
Funds were not easy to come by, but the principal in Chopra Government Senior Secondary School, dug into his savings and bought himself a van and started his one man cleanliness mission.
He would carefully collect the kitchen waste, vegetable peels, fruit skins, and leftover food separately, and hand it over to a local cow shelter as fodder for the animals. The rest would be dump in unused mine pits 40 feet deep outside the city.
Now, Mr Singh has more than 25 volunteers, 3 garbage vans which cover 50 colonies in the neighbourhood.
A lady volunteer told NDTV, "We were fed up of the garbage piling up in our neighbourhood and now we have seen what he has done so we have also joined him as volunteers."
Mr Singh's initiative made such an impact on local lawmaker, Arjun Ram Meghwal, that he arranged a meeting between him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month.
As for Mr Singh, he is back to his mission of keeping the city clean, showing the way that even one person can make a difference.