📍 How our Mehdipatnam lane cleared a clogged drain in two Sundays with one WhatsApp group

Last month the drain at the end of our lane in Mehdipatnam was blocked with plastic and silt, and the rainwater was entering two ground floor houses. I filed a complaint on the app twice and both times it was closed without anyone visiting. So we finally did something about it ourselves, with a little help from the municipal workers. One neighbour, Mrs Fatima, created a WhatsApp group for our lane and added 23 families in an evening. We agreed to chip in 100 rupees each, which gave us 2,300 rupees to start with. Somebody found a sanitation worker who agreed to come on a Sunday morning for 1,500 rupees. He arrived with two helpers and a long iron rod, and the drain was clear by eleven. The amount of plastic that came out was shocking, mostly milk packets, water bottles and old slippers. We stacked it in a pile and photographed it, then sent the photo to the group for everyone to see. The second Sunday we cleaned the lane itself and painted a small sign asking people not to dump anything. A few uncles grumbled about the sign, but nobody has put a bag there since. Last Thursday it rained for ninety minutes and the water went down the drain without touching a single house. The two ground floor families sent a thank you message to the group with three heart emojis. I will not pretend this solves everything, because the main line beyond our lane still floods. But for our own stretch the problem has gone from every rain to not yet this season. We still have 400 rupees left in the pot and the group is deciding whether to buy a broom. If your lane has a similar problem, a small group and a Sunday is a decent place to start. Happy to share how we collected the money without any fights, since that was the hard part. Next on our list is the main line beyond our lane, which still floods every monsoon. Anyway, the drain is clean and I felt like writing it down somewhere.

Old slippers in a drain will never stop surprising me, we pulled out a whole school bag once in Secunderabad. Buy the broom, and maybe a couple of gloves with the leftover, the sanitation guys never seem to have any. Ninety minutes of rain and no water in the houses is a proper win for one lane. Now I'm tempted to start a group for our street too.

Good work on the lane, but I'd be wary of the main line becoming your problem to fix too. Our colony near Toli Masjid paid for the small drains twice, and then officials told us to manage everything. After that our complaints on the app got closed even faster, which I didn't think was possible. Keep filing them anyway, with the photo of that plastic pile attached.

Please do share how you collected the money without fights, that's where our lane always falls apart. We tried something similar in Asif Nagar and three families refused to pay because the drain wasn't near them. After that the WhatsApp group turned into an argument about whose kids throw the chips packets. Mrs Fatima sounds like the person every lane needs, give her a broom as a prize.