Swatchh Bharat mission

 Long overdue, long time ago during the beginning of Indian Prime minister Modi Jee's first tenure, his campaign for cleanliness touched a chord in me. I was so glad that he put some emphasis into something close to my heart. It's another matter like most of his promises made, his endeavor for cleanliness mostly remained in photo ups and optics for public consumption for political purpose than anything substantial came out of his "Swatchha Bharat" (Clean India) movement.

No offence, our metros and other major cities have become giant toilets. Years ago, on a Diwali morning I was on bank of Bindusagar, a shallow pond of historic importance in the vicinity of Lingaraj temple in my city back home Bhubaneswar. It was in the early 1990s when the arteries of Odisha's capital city weren't clogged and no bypass was needed around Bindusagar. The occasion was the SHRADDHA (a ritual for the departed souls) of my grandmother.

No sooner than I entered into ankle deep water of the cesspool I was petrified by a putrid stench emanating from close by. Floating a few feet away I noticed a bloated carcass of a dog. An urchin threw a stone which went straight inside the corpse sending out further ripples of stench which disturbed the flies swarming over it, diverting them towards me. I was on the verge of throwing up feeling the tingling, bitter taste of vomit erupting inside mouth, frantically swatting away the murmuring flies off, ran upwards, jumping through the steps of the haphazardly arranged sedimentary rocks.

Most of us would have encountered similar situations in their lives. We (including me) have a tendency to blame the government on anything and everything but here is a classic example where commoners are responsible for their own actions. Back home on the street across our home in Old Town area of Bhubaneswar, the local authorities have built a nice, slightly slanted PUCCA (metallic) road designed for the drainage of the storm water into the nearby drain which gets chocked on regular basis. The water maint to be drained gets spilled over surrounding street creating stinky, dirty cesspools serving as a great hatchery for mosquitoes. Atop our balcony I could see a guy wearing BMC (Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation in charge of sanitation) jacket scooping out trash from the clogged drain. Out of curiosity I took a closer look to find grain sacks, plastics (locally called polythene) bags, used sanitary napkins and all kinds of stuff which are not bio-degradable. There is only so much government can do unless folks from our upper middle class locality don't develop civic sense.

A while back it was reported that an Air India flight to Frankfurt had to return to Delhi after few hours of flying because of clogged toilets. Reason cited, the passengers flushing things down like blankets and other stuff which they should not. Perhaps some passengers mistook the toilet for washing machine. Or may be it's time to force passengers to use LOTA (mug) instead of toilet papers. Air India has its own lacunae but teaching passengers civic sense is not its job. Can't blame the poor for messing things around when our passengers travelling in airlines behave this way.

Years ago I traveled extensively inside several Caribbean island countries. Though there were visible signs of poverty, but the neighborhoods were maintained squicky clean. I didn't see a single person urinating or squatting by roadside. No betel stained corners or romantic graffiti on walls -"Harry loves Sally". No nostril raising stench. Jamaica may not be Japan, but was neat, clean and orderly. Years back in 1969 in US there were reports of Cuyahoga River catching fire for people to take notice of a major problem in pollution in their waterways. This incident prompted Clean Water Act and now the American rivers, lakes and streams are far better. For us this had been something long overdue. If we can do a Mangalayan and be the 4th largest GDP on earth, why can't benefit earth by keeping our neighborhoods clean ? No rocket science, it's high time to send all our dirty past into dustbins of history.