30 years ago, I went to a village in the outskirts of Salem, while washing my hand in a public tap , I found worms in the water, then i came to know that people in that village used this water for drinking and cooking. When I climbed the tank I saw a cesspool inside. Dead cats, crows, slippers, bottles etc. the tank had no lid. It was a 30000 ltr over head drinking water tank. There were 3 other tanks in the same village, each was worse than the other. Spoke to the village president, he expressed his helplessness. Then I approached the BDO ( Block development officer) he said every panchayat gets funds it's upto them to do the cleaning , everyone in the bureaucracy was driving me from pillar to post just to clean the tank in public interest People of course were expecting others to do the cleaning. So as a trial I got permission from the village president to clean the tank , i employed few boys to do the job. These water tanks were not cleaned for many many years before that. While cleaning 🧹 we removed one feet thick of black sediments from each tank. Then we gave a coat of white cement inside, and put a lid where it was missing. The response from the people was overwhelming, the word spread and village after village invited us to get the water tanks cleaned. In each tank we painted the last cleaned date, this became a trend, every three months I sent my boys to clean the tanks. At one stage we were serving over 150 villages in Salem district, we did this service for 12 years and ensured every village got clean potable drinking water If serving people is politics so be it