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Chandigarh: On June 23, when President Droupadi Murmu confers the Padma Shri for social service upon 88-year-old Inderjit Singh Sidhu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the retired Punjab cadre Indian Police Service (IPS) officer will take his place alongside an array of celebrated actors, artists, scientists and public figures.

Yet among all the many awardees, few stories are likely to be as quietly and unobtrusively remarkable as that of the former Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of police, who spends his days cleaning up a problem most Indians avoid confronting, but many knowingly help create: the garbage they discard.

For nearly three decades after retiring from police service in 1996, Sidhu has exchanged the authority of rank for a broom and a cycle cart, collecting litter from roadsides, parks and public spaces in Chandigarh’s Sector 49, before hauling it away for disposal himself.

What troubles the octogenarian the most, is not the cleaning, but society’s attitude towards it. “People do not feel ashamed while littering,” the reclusive Sindhu told The Tribune. Instead, they feel ashamed while cleaning it up, he added.

This is work that brings Sidhu neither income nor status. Indeed, when he first began sweeping Chandigarh’s streets, the response was far from admiration. Many mocked the former senior police officer, unable to comprehend why a decorated officer who had spent his career in positions of authority, would willingly take up a task commonly associated with municipal workers.

Undaunted, Sidhu ignored them and pressed on.

The symbols of authority that once accompanied him – a senior police officers 9mm semi-automatic handgun, be-ribboned files, wireless sets and multiple jeeps and vehicles – have been replaced by a far simpler set of tools: a jhadu (broom), a cycle cart and above all, the determination to clean his own and surrounding neighbourhoods in a section of Chandigarh that has remained remarkably unchanged despite his advancing age.

Civic instinct stemming from Guru Nanak’s teachings

The reclusive Sidhu, who repeatedly declined to answer his telephone, told The Tribune that........

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