India's prime minister joined millions of schoolchildren, officials and ordinary people who picked brooms and dustpans Thursday in a countrywide campaign to clean parks, public buildings and streets.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept the road in a poor neighborhood in New Delhi on Thursday while launching the Clean India Campaign. Elsewhere in state capitals and small towns, lawmakers, school principals, factory workers and millions of common folk swept and cleared garbage, and cleaned ditches and parks as part of the campaign.

Modi chose the birth anniversary of independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi to launch the five-year drive to clean public spaces in a bid to change India's image as one of the filthiest countries in the world.

Modi, who has made cleanliness and hygiene a major plant of his speeches since taking office in May, led thousands of New Delhi residents on a walk through newly cleaned roads in the heart of the city.

The campaign was preceded by a media blitz exhorting Indians to take a pledge to tidy up their homes and offices. Newspapers carried advertisements while television channels broadcast messages to create awareness about the sanitation and hygiene campaign.

The impact was evident across the country. In cities, towns and villages, people came out in droves, armed with trash cans, rakes and brooms to take part in the mass clean-up.

Cabinet ministers, police and industry leaders have been clearing files and getting rid of clutter in their offices all week as part of the campaign.

Before launching the initiative, officials and schoolchildren had to take a pledge to spend 100 hours a year - roughly two hours a week - cleaning their surroundings.

The campaign ties in with a government plan to build public toilets and end the practice of open defecation - a major challenge in a country where more than half of the country's 1.2 billion people do not have access to toilets.