 |
| Prime Minister Modi launching "Clean India" campaign |
Around thirty
years ago while on a visit to the Peoples’ Republic of China I used to watch
Chinese films on the small black & white TV set having nothing to do in the
evenings. True, I did not understand a word of what was said and yet, for
understanding emotions one does not need to know the language. The films used
to be mostly about peasants and workers with young boys and girls working
together. In one film I found a little romance between a boy and a girl. It
seemed to have blossomed, quite unglamorously, while they swept the streets
together in the early mornings. Later, they would furtively meet again between
classes at their college. Obviously, they were not municipal sweepers; they
were students and had to do such civic duties. This I came to know from one of
the Chinese escorts we had. Devoid of any caste hierarchies like ours, no
stigma is ever attached in China to such duties that are beneath dignity for
most of us.
During the same
trip abroad we were in Japan for a fortnight. One late evening in Shinjuku area
of Tokyo I came out of the famous camera shop of Yudobashi and settled down on
a thoughtfully-provided bench to have a quiet smoke. I had hardly smoked half
of my fag when a man in light blue half shirt and deep blue trousers with dark
blue peak cap came out broom in hand. From his appearance he looked almost like
an airline pilot. He swept the surroundings of the shop, which in our case
would be public space,
collected whatever little litter he found in a bin took
it away inside the shop. I was later told that everyone cleans up the areas
around their respective shops before closure. That explained the absence of any
litter on the streets in the mornings. Even Prime Minister Modi observed during
his recent trip to Japan that children thoroughly clean every part of their
school.
 |
| "Clean India" logo |
Cut to Bhopal a
few years ago. One morning I happened to be at the local New Market rather
early for the locals, i.e. around 11 AM. The shop that I went to was being
swept by a casual employee. Quite contrary to what I had seen in Shinjuku,
after having swept all the rubbish and collecting it all together, the sweeper
used the broom to push all that outdoors on to the street right outside the
shop. The dust and plastic flew around in the rather strong September breeze.
Surprised, I asked the shop-keeper whether he didn’t have a bin for the trash
his shop generated to be emptied at a municipality-designated place, he gave me
a curious look as if I was an extra-terrestrial.
In 1966 while
working at Jabalpur in central India I happened to be going by road to Keymore
via Katni. Just outside Katni I saw about two dozen small brick and mortar cubicles
in apparent disuse. On inquiry I was told these were numerous toilets built for
the villagers but had remained unused. One wonders what went wrong – either
these were planned badly or were not maintained properly or the users found it
inconvenient. Again, while escorting a senior colleague to a village close to
Nagpur, again in central India, in 1979 both of us had to put our hankies to
our respective noses as we picked our way through the lumps of human excreta
strewn all over. The village was seemingly blocked off by these lumps and the
stench. Here was a village that needed toilets but there was none and, surely,
this one was not the only one where there were no toilets.
Our proclivity
to mess up our surroundings apparently has a cultural connection. We, the
Hindus, have that regimen of regularly
pouring water over ourselves to
supposedly cleanse our bodies but would never bother about cleaning our
surroundings. We will bathe in the Ganges to purify ourselves but leave it
contaminated. The public places are, well, of the public; hence why should one
bother about them? Besides, it is infra
dig for a caste Hindu to clean-up the public places, not to speak of his
own personal spaces. There are lower castes whose job has traditionally been to
clean-up the public places and toilets, if any, at home. The Hindu caste
hierarchy comes into play in these matters and this is prevalent in many parts
of the country even today. No wonder India is largely unclean. From dirt,
garbage, trash, dung of various stray animals one would find all of them on the
Indian streets. Littering, spitting, urinating and sometime even defecating
openly are commonly occurrences. Once I happened to see a man defecating on the
sands of Chowpatty in central Mumbai in broad daylight and ditto on another
occasion on the tracks between two platform of Bhopal Jn.
 |
| A view of garbage and a child defecating |
Defecation out
in the open is partly cultural and not entirely out of necessity. I recall my
professor at the college once chided me for being a late-riser. He said he
would get up a 5.00 in the morning, walk out of the house for his
constitutional with a lota-ful (a
vessel-ful) of water. He had a house with a toilet and had no earthly reason to
go out and defecate in the open. Yet, in this matter the culture in which he
was brought up, presumably, in his village in the Hindi Belt comprising Uttar
Pradesh, took over.
With all the
good intentions, one suspects, therefore, whether Modi would be able to clean
up India within the next five years – by 2019, Gandhi’s 150th birth
anniversary. Our habits and beliefs – social or religious – are so deep-rooted
that it would need a herculean effort to change the profoundly ingrained
attitudes. It will take generations for the change to take place; one would
need
to begin at the beginning, starting off with the toddlers, as it were.
Actually other countries, too, did not become what they are today overnight.
Education, a cultural upgrade and the state machinery, all effectively played
their respective roles. We have been far too lax and far too profligate for far
too long. We have allowed cities, towns and villages to deteriorate, decay and
degrade over years and decades. There seems to have been practically no
governance and no public-health administration. Given our attitudes – lack of
pride in the country and a pronounced unconcern for civic cleanliness –five
years, clearly, is too short a period to liquidate the dungheap that has been
built up over ages.
 |
| A view of garbage next to Himachal University, Simla |
On
the flip side, however, it may not be utterly impossible to clean up the
country. After all, millions from our very own stock are settled abroad and
have adapted to the ways of their respective host countries, whether in the
East or the West. While some things of the hosts' culture do naturally rub off
on the immigrants, the Indians there have drastically changed their
unclean ways, mostly because of strict enforcement of laws and stiff penalties
for deviant behaviour. If the Rule of Law is similarly enforced with a strong
arm on every one – those who muck up the country and those who slip up on their
duties of cleaning-up – surely things are likely to change appreciably. For
that to happen, however, the states and their civic bodies and panchayats (village councils) would need
to be sensitised. What would need to be inculcated are pride in one’s country
and commitment to one’s duties, sometimes perhaps fostered even with a force
that is not quite gentle.
_____________
Photos from the Internet
No comments:
Post a Comment