Cow dung-paint to add zing to Bhopal’s Swachh ranking push

Bhopal: Next time when you take a stroll across the City of Lakes and appreciate its beauty and vibrant colours on the walls— think of the bovine. True to the ruling BJP dispensation's ideology to shift towards a cow-based economy, the civic body in Bhopal is set to go green and paint city walls with cow dung-based paint as part of its annual beautification drive ahead of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Survey 2026.Bhopal has been repeatedly ranked among the best clean and green state capitals in the country.The initiative, a leaf taken from Jaipur, is aimed to improve Bhopal's position in national cleanliness rankings and promote sustainable practices.Bhopal mayor Malti Rai said a pilot project was under close consideration and its outcomes were set to guide the next phase. She said the focus was on creating a self-sustaining model by using cow dung from city gaushalas to manufacture the paint locally through a co-operative society model.The move built on BMC's earlier work under the ‘Go-Kashth' model, which became an alternate to wood logs used during cremations and at Holika Dahan, boilers, tandoors and others thereby reducing deforestation while supporting the gaushalas. "With this step, we aim to achieve self-reliance in eco-friendly paint production, creating local jobs and strengthening sustainable innovation," Rai said.BMC's additional commissioner and SBM in-charge Varun Awasthi said proposals for cow dung-based paint were encouraging and BMC was evaluating its performance under Bhopal's climatic conditions.BMC said city beautification ahead of the upcoming Swachh Bharat Survey required large quantities of paint, most of which traditionally contained toxic chemicals. A recent proposal by BMC, worth nearly Rs 3 crore, earmarked painting of about 20,000 square metres of public walls and structures with conventional black Japan paint, an area equivalent to almost six full-sized football fields.BMC said large-scale use of chemical paints contributed to visual uplift but carried risks from volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and heavy metals that seeped into the environment, affecting air quality and water systems. It said this posed a particular risk for Bhopal, known as the "City of Lakes," and its ecosystem.Entrepreneur, Durga Priyadarshini, said cow dung-based eco-friendly paint was priced nearly 20% lower than conventional paints.Meanwhile, critics of the proposal have been repeatedly demanding such paint manufacturers to disclose the actual proportion of cow dung used in production, raising concerns about transparency. Some experts cautioned that the paint performed best in interior applications, suggesting its suitability may be limited when exposed to harsher outdoor conditions.