Youth for Parivarthan’s 12-year civic campaign in Bengaluru shows how organised volunteer action can improve neglected public spaces, support government schools and extend municipal cleanliness efforts. But the organisation’s work also reveals a larger urban question: how much of a city’s everyday maintenance depends on citizens stepping in where formal systems remain stretched.
Founded by advocate Amit Amarnath on June 3, 2014, Youth for Parivarthan has built a network of more than 600 volunteers, according to a report by Prajavani. The group says its objective is to make Bengaluru’s growth sustainable and ensure that its roads, parks and schools can serve as examples for other parts of the country.
The organisation has carried out more than 1,000 service activities without charging for its work. Its volunteers come from different professional backgrounds and typically meet at weekends. They contribute either their time or their own money, while some activities are supported by donors and corporate social responsibility funds.
This model matters because the issues being addressed are not limited to one-off beautification. They involve the daily functioning of public places: waste accumulation, neglected footpaths, damaged school facilities, access to basic supplies and the condition of spaces used by pedestrians and children.
One recent project took place opposite Kamakshipalya police station on Magadi Road, within the western municipal area. A footpath that had become unhygienic and was reportedly being used for urination was cleaned and redesigned. The walls were painted with portraits of figures including Kuvempu, D.R. Bendre, Swami Vivekananda, Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar, B.R. Ambedkar, Sir M. Visvesvaraya and Dr Rajkumar.
The project illustrates the practical value and limits of citizen-led public-space interventions. A neglected place can be transformed relatively quickly when volunteers organise cleaning, painting and public art. At the same time, keeping the space clean depends on regular waste collection, enforcement, maintenance and everyday public behaviour. A visual transformation can improve the appearance of a site, but it cannot by itself replace the municipal functions that prevent the same problems from returning.
Youth for Parivarthan began its cleanliness work in Banashankari before the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission, the report said. The group worked on a park that had become a waste-dumping site. It now identifies locations where waste is repeatedly discarded and refers to them as black spots. Through cleaning, footpath improvements and wall art, it has removed waste from more than 400 such locations.
The scale of these interventions is significant as a civic signal, even though the reported figures do not establish how many of the sites have remained clean over time. That distinction is important. Removing accumulated waste is an immediate intervention; sustaining cleanliness requires coordination with municipal services, reliable collection systems and compliance by residents and commercial establishments.
The organisation’s activities also extend beyond streets and parks. Its Recyclothon programme collects blank pages from partly used notebooks and reuses them to produce notebooks for students in government schools. It made 3,300 notebooks in 2023 and 10,000 notebooks in the following year, according to the report. More than 900 volunteers participated in the April-May effort.
This initiative links waste reduction with educational support. It treats discarded paper as a recoverable resource while addressing a basic need among students from poorer households. The reported numbers also show how a campaign can grow when a clear activity connects environmental action with a direct social benefit. However, the source does not provide details about the quantity of paper collected, the production process or the number of students who received the notebooks.
Government schools form another part of the group’s work. Volunteers initially focused on painting and later supported improvements to basic infrastructure, using assistance from corporate CSR funds. The organisation also provides sanitary pads in schools and scholarships for poorer students. In Lingasugur in Raichur district, three government schools have reportedly been fully upgraded.
These projects underline the relationship between school quality and the wider built environment. A school is not only a teaching facility; its condition affects attendance, dignity, health and the daily experience of children. Yet the involvement of private CSR funds and volunteer labour also raises a question about institutional responsibility. Citizen groups can supplement public provision, but the long-term obligation to maintain safe and functional schools remains with the relevant public education and local-government systems.
Youth for Parivarthan’s work has attracted recognition beyond Bengaluru. Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the organisation’s activities in the 93rd episode of the radio programme Mann Ki Baat. The organisation is led by 38 people, including members who have been involved for about a decade, while volunteers range in age from seven to 82, the report said.
That age range points to a form of civic participation that is broader than a conventional resident association or short-term cleanliness drive. The group combines professional volunteers, school and college students, donors and older residents. Its activities include food distribution around Victoria Hospital, blood donation camps, health check-ups and sapling plantation in addition to public-space and school projects.
Amarnath said the organisation’s goal is to build a beautiful Bengaluru and argued that people who have made a life in the city have a responsibility to keep it clean. His statement reflects the organisation’s central approach: urban improvement is presented not only as a municipal duty but also as a shared civic responsibility.
The evidence supplied in the report does not show how Youth for Parivarthan coordinates with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike on individual sites, how projects are selected, or what formal maintenance arrangements follow the volunteer work. It also does not provide an independent assessment of the durability of the more than 400 black-spot interventions or the impact of the school programmes.
Those gaps do not diminish the documented scale of the effort, but they define what can be concluded from it. Youth for Parivarthan demonstrates that organised citizens can mobilise labour, local knowledge and limited resources to address visible urban problems. It does not establish that volunteer action can substitute for municipal capacity.
Bengaluru’s public spaces ultimately depend on both sides of that equation. Volunteers can identify neglected locations, restore them and build public attention around them. Municipal agencies remain responsible for regular services, infrastructure standards and enforcement. The organisation’s continuing work therefore offers less a replacement for urban governance than a case study in how citizens are attempting to compensate for gaps in the city’s everyday systems.
