On October 2nd 2014, wondrous scenes unfolded in
India’s public spaces. True to the spirit of the Mahatma, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi celebrated Gandhi Jayanti by taking to the streets with a broom
to launch the Swachh Bharat or Clean
India campaign. The media was soon flooded with broom-wielding images of netas, government babus, celebrities of
motley hues, and ordinary people like us. Over 31 lakh central government
employees from all over the country paused from tying red tape, to pledge to
clean up India. Since then, Facebook, WhatsApp and the rest of cyberspace are
flooded with memes, jokes and publicity shots of who is doing what to clean up
this country. The Clean India campaign is an ongoing one, with multiple
suitably impressive goals. Meanwhile, we debate the issue in the social media,
sign pledges, and sometimes even flourish a mop for effect. We then continue to
relieve ourselves at the nearest roadside wall, and toss our garbage at the
neighbours’ doorstep.
So is all this flurry of real and virtual activity leading
the way to a cleaner India? Will pouring public money into more toilets be
enough to keep our cities and villages clean? How can we counter the surge of
environmental pollution from industries? What will happen when people misuse
the toilets, and then return to squatting behind bushes or emptying their
bladders upon public walls, because the toilets no longer work? Will a carpet
ever be found, under which we can brush the mountains of garbage being
generated by our cities? Will the dream of a clean India remain just a dream?
Can people like us help turn that dream into reality?
Half a century ago, V.S. Naipaul observed in An Area
of Darkness how Indians defecate everywhere. They mostly defecate beside
the railway tracks. They also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the
hills; they defecate on the riverbanks, he pointed out. We Indians were
profoundly hurt. We blushed, we bristled with indignation and we took umbrage.
Yet the more things have changed, things and we ourselves, have remained the
same.
This isn’t the first time the government has taken
initiatives to clean up our country. The Rural Sanitation Program of the
eighties was restructured into the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) and
relaunched in 1999. To boost the TSC, in 2003 the government launched an award
for overall sanitation coverage, maintaining clean public spaces and open
defecation -free panchayat villages, blocks and districts. This award was called Nirmal Gram Puraskar.
Then in 2012, the TSC was renamed Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA). The campaign was
revived in a new avatar as the current Clean India/ Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Even
more funds have now been allocated, and constant drum beating in the media,
among other things, has made this campaign more attention grabbing than ever
before. The government’s and our fervent hope is that all this hoopla will
translate into tangible and lasting improvements. While some other developing nations such as the
Philippines also have the problem of open defecation, India’s predicament is in
a class apart. India has the world’s largest number of open defecators. Therefore,
the cleanliness drive is of special importance to us. According to plans,
around 600 million Indians who now relieve themselves in public view because
they have no choice, will all have the benefit of private flush toilets within
the next five years.
We are sometimes embarrassed by the sight of gentlemen hopping
out of their Mercedes to urinate upon conveniently located walls. Don’t we all
have relatives and friends who indiscriminately generate plastic waste, or toss
garbage wherever they like? We hope the awareness campaigns will also change
the mindsets of such educated urban citizens like us. The Intensive drive for
awareness also hopes to cover people from all social and economic segments in
interior areas of the country. We can do our bit here, by pointing fingers at
the wrongdoers among us, and hope to shame them into better behaviour. After
all, clean households and a clean environment will help us all stay healthy and
keep communicable diseases at bay.
The current Clean India campaign is a multi-pronged ongoing drive,
and not a short-lived action and publicity blitz. The Prime Minister is keen on
involving the entire country, and hopes that the campaign will inspire youth
and encourage everyone to follow his steps. Innovative ways are being explored
to encourage cleanliness. Social media is being used as a key platform to
spread the message of the cleanliness drive. Our Vibrant festivals are also to
become occasions for spreading the good word. The Ministry of Drinking Water
and Sanitation has evolved a new campaign strategy to spread the message of
‘Swachh Bharat and safe drinking water’ at festivals such as the Kumbh Melas,
where lakhs of people come together. The renowned Meenakshi Kalyanam festival
of Madurai in Tamil Nadu and the Amarnath Yatra in Jammu and Kashmir will soon
be occasions to spread awareness among pilgrims coming from far and wide. Lord Jagannath’s Rath Yatra of Puri, Odisha,
Maharashtra’s Pandharpur Palkhi Yatra, and Bihar’s Sonepur Livestock Fair are
among the festivals recommended by the Ministry as platforms for launching the
campaign.
By 2019, the
authorities and we, hope that Indians everywhere and from all walks of life will
know and actively participate in the cleanliness drive. The drive envisages:
- Construction of sanitary toilets for households below the poverty line, offering government subsidy where applicable.
- Upgrading existing dry pit latrines without a water seal, into low-cost sanitary latrines.
- Constructing village sanitary complexes for women, with facilities for hand pumping, bathing, and washing. This can be done where there isn’t enough land or space within houses, and where village panchayats consent to maintain the facilities.
- Total sanitation of villages through the construction of drains, soakage pits, solid and liquid waste disposal.
Let’s hope that key people in the government and in the
private sector help the Prime Minister make this campaign a success. May this
campaign fire the public imagination and involve the entire country. Only with
widespread participation and commitment will the dream of a cleaner India be
realised.
The path charted out by the Swachh Bharat campaign doesn’t
quite perfectly address all aspects of cleanliness. The programme leaves some
gaps in the complete sanitation chain, which goes beyond building better and
cleaner toilets. What will happen, for example, when the toilet pits fill up?
That’s happening in some states like Kerala with high sanitation coverage.
Existing treatment facilities are inadequate to deal with overflowing pits.
This creates a different health hazard.
The programme stresses upon providing toilets and offering
subsidies. But many toilets are later misused and stop working. Sometimes the
money is siphoned off by unscrupulous officials and the toilets exist only on
paper. Despite all official efforts and in spite of increasing prosperity,
access to education and information, too many of our fellow citizens simply
don’t care. They will not properly use and maintain what they have, let alone
make efforts to improve things.
Despite these inherent stumbling blocks, palpable positive
change has happened in pockets in our own country. Best and lasting improvement
has been seen where various agencies and the people themselves, have actively
coordinated their efforts at all levels to achieve a common goal. In the 1990s,
the Nandigram II block in West Bengal became the first block in India to take
pride in providing a sanitary toilet for every rural household. To make this
success story happen, officials at the district and block levels worked
together as a team along with the Ramakrishna Mission. Competent technical
support was secured, and funds were released according to needs, and in time.
The state sanitation cell monitored the overall process. Similar successful projects
later happened in some areas of other states. They were all marked by active
involvement and leadership from within the community itself. With the help of
strong political and governmental support, the local people themselves helped
to usher in positive change.
Success can happen. Ordinary people like us can help make
good things happen. It’s time we stopped passing the buck and criticizing the
‘system’. We are ourselves a part of
that very ‘system’ we never tire of blaming. Here are a few ways we can do our
bit to clean up our environment:
People like us can help spread awareness and support
government initiatives by our personal actions. As members of local citizens’
groups, residents’ welfare associations, or as volunteers with social service
organizations, we can help facilitate positive action at the grassroots level.
Best and lasting results are seen when ordinary citizens participate
wholeheartedly. Aware citizens groups can point out shortcomings in government
policies, and offer suggestions for fine-tuning those policies so that optimum
results are achieved in their own communities. Knowledge is power. Spreading
that knowledge and using it to help ourselves, increases its benefits
exponentially.
The Government authorities are making some efforts to
address various issues involved in cleaning India. A committee set up by the
National Green Tribunal, for example, has suggested that the use of fresh river
water for industrial processes, railway and bus cleaning, fire-fighting etc. should
be prohibited and made an offence. This will help maintain the minimum
environmental flow of the highly polluted Yamuna River. In a seemingly
unconnected move by the Government Railway Police (GRP) in Agra, 129 people
were fined for allegedly urinating in public, in just three days in June. Noise
and light pollution is another problem in our cities. Increasing amounts of
untreated sewage, industrial effluents and other waste are finding their way
into our rivers. We can help spread awareness about the many ways our
environment is being sullied. We can draw attention to the importance and
interconnectedness of all measures to counteract environmental pollution, and
thus help policy makers and fellow citizens more conscious of the big picture.
The authorities need to clean up their act in implementing
pollution control measures upon our industries. Too often, the small fry fall
below the radar of the authorities, while big money has a way of getting its
own way. Vigilant citizens groups can help by whistle-blowing on such pollution
generators within their own communities. Citizens groups can also help pinpoint
the sources of corruption, which help polluting industries find loopholes, and
siphon off funds meant for public projects or paying sanitation workers.
We need to get over our feudal prejudices, and treat with
respect those who clear our garbage and help keep our surroundings clean. We
can show some concern for the welfare of the sanitation workers in our own
neighbourhoods, by guiding them towards better healthcare or educating their
children.
Cynicism is ingrained in many of us. We take it for granted
that government measures will fail. We justify our own inaction by averring
that others will dirty our surroundings anyway, no matter how hard we try to keep
everything clean. The murky side of human nature sometimes surfaces not just in
our own country, but elsewhere in the world. Plastic waste ‘islands’ stretch
for miles in the Pacific Ocean. Mt Everest’s majesty is being sullied by mounds
of waste left behind by mountaineers. Around 30% of the Great Wall of China has
disappeared over time, not just due to natural wear and tear, but also because
of reckless human activities. Reckless constructions and deforestation are
increasing the risk of flash floods and landslides in the Himalayas. It’s up to
us to resign ourselves to the elephant of pollution in the room. Or, we can
pick up our brooms to help make a difference.
The fact is, that small groups of ordinary citizens with
full time jobs and families to care for, have come together to show results.
Instead of just talking, they have worked in silence even in our very own namma Bengaluru to clean up spots such
as Church Street and Malleswaram’s vegetable and fruit market. Once they have taken the lead, other folks
like us have seen the change and curbed their native muck-tossing instincts.
This brings us to a bigger question of our role on this
planet. The rate of extinction of species has been precipitated in recent times
by human activities. We have a hand in making our earth less liveable, not just
for other creatures, but even for ourselves. We seem hell-bent on transforming
our planet into a toxic junk heap someday. If we don’t
want to clean up out act and save this world, perhaps we can still hope to
discover new worlds to colonize and exploit.
