Long before he became known as Bengaluru's "Footpath Mayor," Arun Pai was a schoolboy captaining neighbourhood cricket matches in the same locality as a young Rahul Dravid. Today, Pai is better known for a very different innings, camping out for 24 straight hours beside Church Street's worst garbage dump in 2008, and going on to build a citizen-led cleanup model that has since gone national. The IIM Bangalore alumnus, founder of Bangalore Walks and the man behind The Ugly Indian collective, shared the origin story at a recent talk, admitting the whole idea began simply because he got tired of everyone blaming everyone else.
Why is India so filthy? The Question Nobody Wanted To Answer
Pai says the question had bothered him for years: why is India so filthy compared to other cities around the world? "But we live in denial," he said, describing how people privately have theories but never speak up. When he went looking for research on the subject back in 2008, he found nothing. "There were no case studies. There were no success stories of what it takes to keep a city street clean," he recalled.
