Typical Indian psyche about cleanliness means a fetish for squeaky-clean floors at home and ignoring adjoining streets sighing under the weight and stench of garbage. Will the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan change the way India looks and smells, 15 years from now?
PRAHLAD KAKKAR // It is a campaign of immense proportions, not only in terms of the task at hand, but also what it stands for. If you start with the streets, you work towards homes and into the minds of the people of India. It is all about hygiene and cleaning up, as it were. Like I have mentioned, it is not just a physical campaign for cleanliness. It works on the minds of Indians who believe in personal cleanliness but don’t care how dirty our streets are.
If you clean up a space, you feel a sense of belonging for it and will not like to see it dirty again — you want to keep it clean. Look at the slums, for instance. The surroundings around these living spaces that millions call their home are filthy. People who are against the slums say that the people living there cause the filth and so they should deal with it. Look at the slums that are near Bandra in Mumbai – they are almost at your doorstep. There’s filth and open defecation on the roads. But I ask you, how can you make these slums invisible? By cleaning them, of course! If the people in the slums can manage to clean up their own areas, it will make these slums invisible. In other words, they won’t be slums anymore.
Ironically, the people living in these slums are the same who are engaged in keeping other peoples’ homes clean and tidy. Cleanliness, at the end of the day, is a matter of will. It starts with the thinking of making a change. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan might seem like a token exercise in the beginning and you will wonder how many people will keep at it. But despite being a sceptic, I am sure it will work. If there is a section of society saying, “Come join me, I’m going to clean an area and keep it what way,” it is a significant start. It is the beginning of a new thinking. This is the only way to make India clean and keep it that way.
It’s also a question of push and pull. I feel under the current prime minister, this movement will not be a token statement or merely lip service. He will make sure there is actual work happening on the ground and that the streets are indeed being cleaned. The other good thing about this campaign is the way it gives each one a chance to make a commitment to a cause. Usually, we escape from our social responsibilities by giving money to various causes. With the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan it is not about money at all – it is about devoting your time and energy to a cause.
If you clean a city even once, it will remain clean, I feel. I also think that while the current campaign has a carrot dangling, with time there the same may turn into a stick, which will remind us to stay clean. If need be, that might be implemented and that might work even better!
I feel that if once a month, every babu, every bureaucrat, every minister comes out of his office with a jhadu and cleans the street near his office, even if it is symbolic, it will work wonders. Why is it that we are no longer shocked by the piles of garbage rotting near our homes, the open defecation in India and the stench of it all? I think it’s time we smell the potty.
BHARTI CHATURVEDI // The Urban Development ministry, after many years, has become a dynamic one and I am impressed. At the same time, there’s a lot that goes into a cleaning campaign, and none of it is easy.
Honestly, I don’t know the details of the entire Swachh Bharat Campaign. So, for starters, more about the plans should be out in the open for the public to give feedback about and comment on. Two, if I had a say in the campaign, I would immediately make a one-year plan where I combine the building capacity of municipalities and urban local bodies because we need a paradigm shift. I would also plan out a whole new way for the employees there to think about waste and create incentives for people for the same. I would also put my plan out in public for comments and feedback.
The Swachh Bharat Campaign is a tough challenge to accomplish. For starters, there is stigma against occupational routine work with dirt. For instance, look how we treat the jhadu at home. The maid brings the jhadu, which is hidden in a corner, if not outside the house, vis-à-vis the vacuum cleaner, which is never treated that way. So we think the idea of people who are otherwise considered highly educated people, and who are considered the most powerful people in the country to go out and say I will deal with the dirt is a powerful message.
But there is a lot more that needs to be done. One, we have to almost instantly decide and start universal door-to-door collection coverage to every urban household and every urban shop, otherwise people are going to litter.
Make sure they are charged for the service, no matter how little the amount is. Subsidise it if you want to, but make sure there is universal coverage available for everybody. I think it should be made mandatory for people to use it and pay for it, just like it is for bijli, paani. Two, you also have to move to decentralised composting, because more than 50 per cent of our waste is wet and that is what smells horrible, on which flies lay eggs and that’s the waste that rots and releases methane, a greenhouse gas.
Centralised composting just doesn’t take care of organic waste in India; Delhi has three big plants and people still have so much organic waste. Also, we don’t have land to dump this waste. Along with that, you also have to ensure that municipalities in metros, tier-I and tier-II towns have horticulture divisions. That way, you make sure that instead of buying any form of fertiliser, they can buy it from the composting divisions. What do you do with 10 tonnes of compost otherwise?
Three, we have to include the kabadis and rag pickers. Right now they are taking care of 20-25 per cent of your waste. The process to include them in the cycle needs to be formalised. Give them identity cards, train them better — they should be the people who are given the 100 per cent doorstep collection. Not just include these people, but also chart out a roadmap to identify places where they can set up their kabari shops. After all, you need storage for hypersegregation and our cities don’t do that.
There are also wastes that are toxic, such as CFL bulbs that have mercury. What do you do with menstrual waste, which is mostly plastic, or with diapers, for that matter? You have to look at the solution based on the idea called extended producer responsibility, which means that if you are a brand owner or a company head that manufactures any of these wastes that can be called sanitary or hazardous wastes, please be responsible for collecting them and disposing them safely.
We also need to find ways to reduce the waste. Thus, we will just have to put a ban on plastic bags and Styrofoam. You have to curtail waste through various legislations, punitive measures and through fiscal incentives.