Two months after content creator Surendra Singh Choudhary — known online as Bittu Tabahi — finished an eight-month solo cleanup of Madhya Pradesh’s Ajnar River, he found it full of waste again. Kangana Ranaut has now amplified his disappointment, and the clip is travelling fast.
The moment that reset the cleanup
Bittu shared a video on Tuesday from his village in Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district. The water was strewn with flower petals, clothes and plastic left behind after religious rituals. In the clip, he says in Hindi, “Mere aanth mahine ki mehnat yun barbaad ho jayegi, maine kabhi socha nahi tha” — eight months of work, undone in a way he never imagined.
He did not stop. “I don’t know how to swim, but I still step into the river to remove the garbage,” he says in the video.
Kangana’s response
Kangana Ranaut shared a news report about Bittu and wrote: “This is so sad but also the brutal reality of our nation, people cry about rights all day but never think about their duties.”
The comment turns one creator’s setback into a wider argument about rights and duties. That is the context behind the pictures: viral recognition can put a spotlight on a problem without changing the daily habits that created it.
How the story stacks up
- Bittu spent eight months cleaning the Ajnar River alone, often barehanded and with no safety gear.
- His work earned a shout-out from Anand Mahindra, a job offer from a Dutch NGO, and a felicitation from Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav in September.
- He has 1.9 million Instagram followers and joined cleanups in Delhi, Gurugram and Mumbai; a three-day Delhi drive with a team collected roughly 585 kg of waste.
- Within two months of his original cleanup, the river was polluted again, and he resumed cleaning.
Why the reversal matters
The two-month reversal is the part worth sitting with. A river is a shared resource, and no single cleaner can protect it round the clock. The waste in the clip — ritual offerings, clothes and plastic — shows the gap between admiring a creator and matching their effort.
For celebrity-watchers, the takeaway is not only Kangana’s quote. It is a live reminder that a feel-good viral story can trend while the original problem returns. That is a useful filter the next time such a clip lands in your feed.
What to do with the momentum
If the story sticks with you, make the support practical. Follow creators who show sustained cleanup work, back local drives, and keep festival and ritual waste out of water bodies. Praise moves a post; participation moves the problem.
Source: Hindustan Times
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