Indore just bagged its eighth consecutive Swachh Survekshan title as India’s cleanest city. Every IET DAVV student knows the flex—we brag about it in every group project icebreaker. But lowkey, walking past the campus gates toward Bhawarkuan, I’ve started noticing who actually pays for that trophy. It’s the rag-pickers sorting through our mess while we’re stressed about mid-sems. And honestly? The awareness gap on campus is giving “out of sight, out of mind.”

Here’s the fact that hit me: Indore generates over 1,000 tonnes of waste daily, and rag-pickers historically handled about 20% of it—with more than 5,000 people, mostly women, doing this work. That’s not a small marginal group. That’s a whole informal workforce holding up the “clean” image while remaining invisible in our daily campus conversations.

I’ve seen them near the IET back gate, sifting through bins at hours when most of us are still snoozing or doom-scrolling. They’re not on anyone’s radar unless a reel about “Indore’s cleanliness” goes viral.

The People Behind the “Cleanest City” Title

My honest take as a student: we romanticize the Swachh Survekshan win but skip the part where the city’s waste-picker integration is still messy. Indore Municipal Corporation did employ around 700 garbage pickers at the trenching ground with better pay and PF, which is genuinely based. But awareness on campus? Pretty mid.

We don’t talk about waste segregation beyond the one mandatory environmental studies lecture. We don’t ask where the dry waste from our canteen actually goes. The gap isn’t malice—it’s just that no one’s made it relevant to our hyper-specific student bubble.

Making Waste-Picker Awareness Relevant on Campus

What would actually slap: a student-led audit of waste generated in IET hostels and canteens, paired with a session where we hear from sanitation workers directly. Not a guest lecture from an official. Real talk from the people who handle our chai cups and assignment printouts.

Cleanliness Must Include Dignity and Recognition

The cleanest city title is valid. But if IET DAVV students—future engineers, managers, decision-makers—graduate without ever genuinely seeing the humans behind the “clean” flex, we’re just perpetuating the same invisibility.

The rag-pickers aren’t a nuisance to be managed. They’re the backbone. Time we acted like we know it.