Should Roger Federer be roped in as an ambassador for Swachh Bharat?

In case Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer is looking for an alternative — or even parallel — career in an unrelated field after his US Open defeat, he should be roped in as yet another celebrity brand ambassador for the Swachh Bharat campaign, if not its first international evangelist. While the disgraced Fifa boss Sepp Blatter may have blotted the Swiss reputation for obsessive cleanliness, a series of tweets showing Federer clearing up litter including towels and bottles strewn on a court in Flushing Meadows offers a germ of an idea.

Sports stars could be utilised to get their own colleagues and spectators to clean up the arenas after big games. They could take a cue from a private Indian airline that gets its passengers to collect and dump accumulated trash in the cabins before the planes land.
Sports stars could be utilised to get their own colleagues and spectators to clean up the arenas after big games.
India’s own tennis ace Sania Mirza has been promoting a campaign to crowd-source ideas for a ‘litter-free India’ but sports icons like her could surely be persuaded to take a more proactive role, perhaps by Federer himself when he arrives in India this December for a tennis event. In the meantime, India’s cricketers should be sounded out for effecting some reverse sweeps after their matches so that the detritus of thousands of fans is cleared up speedily by them, even if creating litter cannot be controlled just yet.