Make in India can happen only if we make India clean
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's clarion call for Swachh Bharat is timely. India has become dirty, filthy and ugly. It is time we faced this harsh reality and stop burying our heads in the sand. Living in denial will be at our own peril. Modi's campaign was also symbolic in its timing, it was launched on Mahatma Gandhi's birthday who placed as much importance on the lofty ideals of ahimsa and freedom struggle as on cleanliness - in both body and mind.
No chore or detail was too small or insignificant for Gandhi even if he and the country were caught up in epochal upheavals. He cleaned his toilets, he washed his clothes, he attended his prayer meetings every day of his life. He was never under the delusion that these could be overlooked over pressing political matters of state during the independence movement. So it was laudable that while the prime minister was on a whirlwind tour of the United States drawing crowds like a rock star, and also drawing flak from Congress for getting carried away in his craze for publicity, he took everyone by surprise by making Swachh Bharat his main mission, the moment he got off the plane from New York at Delhi.
Modi's call for a clean India on Gandhi Jayanthi on October 2 was not a flash in the pan. He spoke of it again in his second "Mann Ki Baat" address to the nation on Doordarshan. His emphasis was mainly on two things - black money and Swachh Bharat. He has realised the importance and urgency of making and keeping India clean. "Make in India" cannot happen without " Clean India". Unlike Gandhi, when he repeatedly said cleanliness is next to godliness, which encompassed both physical and spiritual cleanliness, here it is only about cleanness, keeping India - its cities, towns and villages and environment physically clean. Clean surroundings, clean water and clean air. India is choking on its own filth where no city, town or village is free of garbage and sewage. Our rivers, fresh rainwater lakes and underground aquifers are polluted. The large cities have air pollution above permitted levels for healthy living. And municipal corporations and village panchayats are unable to provide clean affordable drinking water anywhere in the country to its people.
That the prime minister of the country has pledged to make India clean by 2019, five years from now, which will be the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi should make us all sit up as only five years are left. It will be uncharitable to attribute this mission as mere tokenism. It is for the first time we are seeing a prime minister lay so much emphasis on cleaning up the physical filth in India and leading the movement from the front. So, shorn of politics and partisanship we have to find practical ways to make it our mission to make India clean.
Jacob Burckhardt, the famous and influential Swiss cultural historian, said, "Cleanliness is indispensable to our modern notion of social perfection." It is the necessary condition of the modern economy. The welfare states of Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway which have very high per capita income also are on top of the list of countries with the happiest people. These countries have very clean cities, towns and villages which are also aesthetically and efficiently well laid out with great emphasis on renewable energy, care for their environment, and beautiful recreational areas and parks, pedestrian and cycling paths. If the city is free of garbage, provides a beautiful environment, enabling people to prefer and enjoy walking and cycling instead of always using an automobile, it will reduce healthcare costs and also produce a healthy, productive and creative population.
India today is at a crisis point in our levels of cleanliness. Our pilgrimage towns, from Gangotri to Kashi and Kanyakumari, our tourist destinations Agra and Jaisalmer to Mysore, our hill stations or cities be it Calcutta or Kanpur or Mumbai, are at breaking point. A time will come, and soon, when investors may shun India like the plague. This is not to sound alarmist or paint the dooms-day scenario but the danger is real.
While Modi has done well to exhort the people and urge the country to action to participate in cleanliness and is allocating large amount of central funds for some projects, it is still not clear how this is going to be achieved. Will it once again remain a slogan? A clear tangible action plan is not in sight. The responsibilities of keeping cities, towns, and villages clean, the rivers unpolluted lies with the state government and more so with the city corporations, town municipalities and village panchayats and not with the Central government.
Indians in their private lives are clean. It is inherently ingrained in all our religions. All Hindus must have taken a bath before entering temples. They wash their feet before entering the temples as according to the Puranas, the demon Kali is believed to be at the hind of the feet. The poorest of the poor clean up and wash the front porch everyday and decorate with rangoli and bathe and offer pooja at home. In Islam, the Quran says - "Allah loves those who keep themselves pure and clean. " We have a paradox. We are cleaner than most people in the world who do not bath daily. We are privately clean, yet our public places are dirty beyond sufferance and imagination! Our temples, our houses, military cantonments and many large reputed private factories and campuses of private companies which are mini townships, private hospitals and private airports are clean but our cities and towns managed by the government are dirty.
But public places are managed and required to be kept clean by State governments through their civic bodies under corporations, municipalities and village panchayats who have the organisational set-up, resources, infrastructure and the manpower. Not private citizens. Therein lies the rub. The state governments and by extension the civic bodies are not doing their job. It is too well known that it is a lethal combination of corruption compounded by incompetence and want of vision that is the bane. So unless systemic changes and reforms and strict audit of good governance are brought about, that reduces corruption while bringing about transparency and accountability by the state at the level of local bodies any number of speeches and slogans though well meaning, may not translate into workable solutions to make India clean.
For a start at the lowest levels, people who carry out the cleaning and removal of garbage, since it is a dirty job which everyone feels demeaning and feel someone else must perform it for them, their salaries must be increased five or six times to make it attractive and keep them motivated. It may sound crazy but those who clean must get a better salary than a fresh engineer in an IT company. In the new India with a consumer culture, the rich and the educated consume and pollute and waste more than the poor, and they can't object if the state pays those who clean up and do the dirty job, a very high salary. Urban planning, sanitation, sewage treatment, recycling and segregation and conversion of garbage in large cities requires highly qualified, competent, committed and visionary people. And the state governments must make it the number one priority to revamp our town planning and allocate larger budgets to recruit the best and prevent the ticking time-bomb from going off.
It is important and necessary to educate common people, but ultimately the civic bodies who are responsible and elected and who have executive departments to carry out this task must discharge that function. It is naive to expect that our country will become clean if those who are responsible in various departments do not do their job, for which they are drawing a salary and a department that exists under the statute abdicates that responsibility with impunity and is not held accountable.
Wherever one looks as you travel the length and breadth of our country, it is an eye-sore, full of garbage, sewage, broken foot paths, potted roads with slush and muck, mounds of uncleared debris not to mention inadequate clean potable running water or unpolluted water bodies. It will not be an exaggeration to say that "Dirt and Filth" may pose to be India's greatest crisis and may snuff out foreign inbound tourism completely and the ugliness and consequent health hazard may have a devastating dwindling effect on FDI in many sectors. It is an existential crisis of frightening proportions.
The state governments must now accord their highest priority to cleanliness in all its aspects (environment, water, sanitation, sewage and garbage) before any other agenda like Global Investors Meet or making more SEZs and Technology Parks, by ensuring its civic bodies perform and discharge their duties and responsibilities and deliver. That for now seems a tall order. Without a clean, habitable place neither GDP (Gross Domestic Product) nor GDH (Gross Domestic Happiness), the true barometer of prosperity of a society, is possible.
Creation of clean and healthy townships, recreational and large social public spaces for the people which are beautiful is sound economic policy that will attract investments, generate economic activity, boost tourism and generate employment. That does not need much investment but requires of the ruling parties in states to deliver on good governance accompanied by administrative reforms and tough measures to completely overhaul and revamp their their civic bodies.
Realistically speaking, looking at various state governments and their civic bodies right now, that seems like wishful thinking.