Modi's other inspiration for Swachh Bharat

If Prime Minister Narendra Modi has any other inspiration apart from Mahatma Gandhi to launch the Swachh Bharat campaign, he is Ramji Bhai Patel.

Patel, an elderly expat Indian living in the United States, always took up the brooms, whenever he visited his ancestral village at Unjha in Mehsana district of Gujarat. It, however, took a few years before others in the village too realised why the elderly NRI was so keen to keep his native place clean.

Modi on Thursday himself told a conclave of expat Indians about Ramji Bhai Patel and his cleanliness campaign, albeit without revealing the name of the septuagenarian, who owns a motel chain in the US and lives in Los Angeles.

The prime minister referred to a newspaper report about an overseas Indian, who always took up broomas and cleaned the neighbourhood of his ancestral residence in a village in Gujarat.

He said that people in the village had initially laughed at him, but they too joined him after a few years.