Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) painted more than 600 walls across the city’s 150 wards on Saturday under its ‘Rang De Gulabi 2.0’ campaign, but the return of open garbage depots has raised questions about whether the beautification drive can deliver lasting sanitation improvements before Diwali.
The campaign was conducted across all 13 JMC zones, with school and college students, non-governmental organisations and residents participating in the wall-painting activities. Mayor Sunil Kothari also joined the drive, which aimed to improve Jaipur’s appearance and promote public awareness about cleanliness.
The painted walls were presented as part of an effort to make the city more attractive ahead of Diwali. The campaign also sought to use public participation to reinforce messages around keeping roadsides and other shared spaces clean.
However, several garbage depots that were cleared during the first phase of the campaign reportedly reappeared within days. The recurrence has highlighted the gap between removing visible waste points for a campaign and preventing the same locations from becoming open dumping sites again.
The issue places responsibility on both the municipal system and residents. Open garbage depots affect the appearance of public spaces, but they also indicate continuing difficulties in ensuring that waste is handed over through the designated collection system or deposited in nearby dustbins.
JMC commissioner Om Kasera said beautification was the primary focus of the latest campaign, while stressing that public participation would be necessary to eliminate open garbage dumping. “If people stop dumping waste in the open and hand it over to garbage hoppers or use nearby dustbins, half the problem faced by residents and the corporation can be solved,” he said.
The commissioner’s statement links the persistence of open depots to disposal practices at street level, where residents’ decisions interact with the availability and use of municipal collection arrangements. The reported return of previously cleared depots also shows that one-time cleaning activity does not by itself resolve recurring waste accumulation.
The campaign’s scale — more than 600 walls across 150 wards — gives it a citywide footprint. Its sanitation impact, however, will depend on whether the locations cleared during the first phase remain free of dumped waste and whether residents continue to use garbage hoppers or dustbins instead of open areas.
For JMC, the immediate task is to maintain the cleaned and painted sites while ensuring that waste collection and disposal arrangements continue to function around them. The corporation’s next steps will determine whether ‘Rang De Gulabi 2.0’ remains primarily a visual improvement campaign or becomes part of a sustained effort to prevent open garbage dumping across Jaipur.
