Ajnar River clean-up volunteer Bittu Tabahi gets Dutch job offer, asks India where to go next
Bittu Tabahi, who spent months cleaning the polluted Ajnar River in Madhya Pradesh by himself, has received a job offer from The Ocean Cleanup and now wants to expand his work to other states.
A young man whose solo clean-up of a heavily polluted river in Madhya Pradesh drew widespread attention online has received a job offer from an international environmental organisation, and is now asking the public to help him choose his next destination.
Surendra Singh Choudhry, known on social media as Bittu Tabahi, spent several months removing plastic, discarded waste and other rubbish from the Ajnar River, as well as from the areas around it. The 21-year-old student documented the work as he went, sharing photographs and videos that showed the river before and after his efforts.
What set his campaign apart was that it was carried out largely without the backing of a major government programme or an established environmental group. He arranged basic supplies using his own resources and returned repeatedly to the river to clear the accumulated waste.
The visual record of the transformation helped his efforts travel widely online, eventually reaching Boyan Slat, the Dutch environmentalist who founded and heads The Ocean Cleanup. The organisation works on plastic pollution in oceans and rivers, and its interest in Bittu's work led to the job offer he disclosed on social media.
In an Instagram video, Bittu thanked his followers for their support during the clean-up and said he now wanted to extend the mission beyond Madhya Pradesh. "I would like to visit different states now to clean up there as well," he said, before asking his audience to decide where he should go first. The video carried the caption, "Which state should I come to first?"
The question drew a stream of suggestions in the comments, with users recommending Bihar, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra among other states and regions. With responses arriving from across the country, Bittu appears set to take his clean-up campaign to new ground.