If you exit from the eastern side of Mumbai’s suburban Vile Parle train station, you’ll walk into one of the city’s busiest markets, where scores of hawkers peddle everything from fruit and vegetables to flowers, utensils and clothes. It’s like many city markets, but with one big difference: Nothing is sold in plastic bags here. And don’t be surprised if you spot an energetic man in his 40s who’s greeted with warm smiles by the hawkers although he’s not buying anything. That’s Subhash Dalvi, a civil engineer with Mumbai’s municipal corporation. Here at the market, not far from his government flat, Dalvi is not on official duty—in fact he’ll tell you that he’s pursuing his “hobby.”
“Have you enough paper and cloth bags?” Dalvi enquires of Badrinath Gupta, a middle-aged fruit-seller.
“Han ji” Gupta nods, pointing to a bundle of paper bags.
It was Dalvi who got everybody here to avoid plastic carry bags since March last year and use paper or cloth bags instead.
To tell the story of how Vile Parle East gave up plastic bags, Dalvi recalls a day in July 2000, when this suburb, where Mumbai airport is situated, saw unprecedented flooding after very heavy rains. Life was seriously disrupted, with people wading through knee-deep water. The culprit: a drainage system clogged with countless discarded plastic bags, and their biggest source was the market.
That evening, Dalvi called a meeting of friends, shop-owners and hawkers at Decent Chemists, a local medical store. “If we collect money to buy cloth and paper bags, we could avoid such flooding in future,” he told those who had gathered. Soon they collected about Rs80,000 and used the money to supply free cloth and paper bags to vendors in and around the market and to print leaflets urging people to use their own shopping bags. Dalvi also got some volunteers and the police to spread his message.
 It worked—only for about four months. But why did it fail? “There was a lack of awareness about the environmental hazards that plastic can cause,” says Bakulesh Thakkar, who owns the medical store. “And with no ban on plastic carry bags at the time, it was hard to get people to cooperate.”
“The market is scattered over a large, undefined area,” adds Dalvi. “It was no easy task, but I wasn’t giving up.”

Five years later, on 26th July, 2005, Mumbai saw its worst-ever floods, which took about 1000 lives and caused untold damage to property. Once again, a city drainage system overwhelmed with discarded plastic bags was blamed. It had a positive impact though. Officials and citizens became more aware of the problem and the city banned thin—less than 50 microns—plastic bags. These are usually thrown away and not reused.
The ban worked for a while, but because enforcement went from lax at first to practically non-existent, all kinds of plastic bags were back in months. “The city is simply too big and too full of shops and unregulated hawkers for any such ban to really work, unless citizens avoid plastic bags on their own,” explains Dalvi.
 Thanks partly to Dalvi’s persistence, early last year, Mumbai Mayor Shraddha Jadhav pleaded against the use of plastic carry bags. After that Dalvi decided to act again. By March 2009, he launched a fresh drive in Vile Parle East, this time with some new strategies. He put up some money of his own and got friends to chip in. He also got the local Kapol Cooperative Bank to donate 50,000 cloth bags. Posters were put up and leaflets distributed urging hawkers and people to stop using plastic. And dustbins were placed outside many shops. 
Dalvi and his volunteers also went about educating people on the subject. But it was hard to get many hawkers to agree. “Being a municipal official, Dalvi could have berated them for using the banned bags,” says Rajgopal Nadar, a Vile Parle textile merchant. “Since that does not work in the long run, he chose kindness and good cheer instead.”
Dalvi also tackled stubborn hawkers and small shopkeepers by explaining how plastic bags were actually eating into their profits. When they understood the arithmetic, they realized they could save Rs1000 to 2500 every month if they used paper or cloth bags instead.
“The hardest to convince were a group of women selling flowers,” recalls Dalvi, “and I had to be tactful.” Since they had school-going kids, Dalvi gave them geometry boxes and crayons as gifts to get them to comply. And they did. “I now save about Rs30 every day by wrapping flowers only in old newspapers,” says Laxmi, a flower seller. “Even my kids are happy because I can buy them treats with some of the money I save.”
Today, try asking any Vile Parle East vendor for a plastic carry bag. “No, not in this place,” they’ll tell you. Some of them may lend you sturdy cloth bags against a Rs10 deposit. Dalvi’s crusade also provides income to several people who now sell paper and cloth bags.

Apart from this, Dalvi has been active in other social causes. In 1993, he started a literacy drive at a Mumbai slum, with support from the National Literacy Mission. He got a 2001 National Youth Award for doing relief work in cyclone-hit Orissa and for a cleanliness drive he organized in Dharavi, Mumbai’s biggest slum. Films Division made a documentary Dharavi: A New Beginning about it. Dalvi has also received the Paryavaran Ratna from the Mayor of Mumbai, and the municipal corporation’s Clean Mumbai Award.
Subhash Dalvi’s success in Vile Parle East might seem like a drop in the ocean for Mumbai. But that’s created some welcome ripples, because his drive against plastic bags has spread to a few other Mumbai suburbs already. “I have a vision of making the city free of plastic carry bags one day,” says Dalvi. “With a little creativity and persistence, we can solve many of our problems.”