The Dirty Gentleman: A proud Indian

Tell an Indian that you and your country are dirty, and he is going to kill you, no matter if at that point he was urinating at a roadside. Being a gentlemen but keeping the country dirty is an undying habit and attitude of our civilised society.
The pathetic condition of civic standards we Indians have is a matter of great concern. One can frequently witness the apathetic behaviour of large parts of our society when it comes to keeping the surrounding areas rubbish-free and enjoyable. Talk about the heap of garbage, road littered with junk, filth in the streets, empty packets of eatables, polythene and anything that is no longer needful are dumped on the streets. At some parts of the city especially in the dark narrow streets, we have to watch where we step; we can never take our eye off the road. The parks meant for kids to play and elders to relax and to do part of their exercise regime are found to be heavily littered with empty beer bottles, glasses, packets of eatables and what not. These public properties are meant for the good of public itself then why don’t we just accept it as ours! Why can’t we keep our garbage in our pockets until we find a garbage bin! Why don’t we bring a spade and use it to dig some soil to cover the feces of pets while taking them for a walk? why is the Right To Litter a fundamental right in India?

It is pretty clear that inherently we Indian are not clean, it seems bizarre but it is true. Indian system is sheer dirty starting from our streets, roads, parks, trains, buses, toilets, govt. offices, buildings, hospitals, eateries, religious places, rivers, canals, fields, environment, air, railway stations, bus stops or whatever you can think.
It is a big shame every of our neighboring countries which are much lower in economic standards like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan have much better sanitation records than us.
Spitting Paan and Guthka in the corners of building (public or private), on the name of inherent spitting habit is very pleasing habit for many of us!  Open defecation and urination in public around at the walls of parks, pavements and at any abandoned corner does not cost (literally) anything to anybody. Data says that still 60% of Indian population defecates in open and only 30% has access to improved sanitation. Of the 2.5 Billion people in the world that defecate in open, some 665 million live in India. This is of greater concern as 88% of deaths from diarrhoea occur because of unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. One intellectual minister in UPA govt. Mr. Jairam Ramesh remarked that “India is world’s largest open toilet.” And he was very much correct in saying that “India needs more toilets than temples.”

Coming to two major rivers, the holy ones, Ganges and Yamuna; it was estimated that only 27% of India's wastewater was being treated, with the remainder flowing into rivers, canals, groundwater or the sea. Another reason for their filthy condition is the dumpings in the name of religious offerings which adds mercury, lead, paints polythene and other chemicals in the water.
The sacred Ganges is infested with diseases and in some places it has becomes black and septic. Corpses, of semi-cremated adults or enshrouded babies drift slowly by. NewsWeek describes Delhi's sacred Yamuna River as "a putrid ribbon of black sludge" where the concentration of fecal bacteria is 10,000 times the recommended safe maximum despite a 15-year program to address the problem. Cholera epidemics are not unknown. This is the major reason for a huge number of diarrhoea and cholera related new born deaths in India.

Enough is not just to take daily bath and cleaning inside of our house on the name of hygiene. Maintenance of aesthetics of the surrounding are not taught in any school, many uneducated people maintaining cleanliness can be seen and many high profile working class pee at the corners and throw empty bottles out the window of their cars. Even in the colleges the walls and floor are found to be covered with multilayer of the advertising pamphlets. The amount of garbage placed inside the garbage bin is always less than what is littered around in the college canteen. The newly painted walls and doors are found full with useless writings by the future of India going to the colleges. In hot humid summer nothing is better than a bottle of chilled water or an ice cream, but littering the same after use is the most frequent scene. So you can’t just blame uneducated mass and poverty responsible for this dirty filthy nuisance.

This shows how habitual we are to live in denial. Whenever a slap of reality hits upon us, we just start running like a mad bunch of filthy hypocrite donkeys. We can tolerate the filth but we can’t hear the truth about that filth. And that we start putting our hopes and faith to a God- man or Godfather that some PM or minister will come and clean and change everything just by a swing of some magic wand. No PM or minister will stop you from urinating on the roadside, no one will catch your hand while throwing a bottle on the road, no one will send officials to clean up your temples, and no one even will clean your rivers. E.g. the second most important factor polluting GANGA and Yamuna are the religious offerings or dumping. If government will even put a question over such offerings, we citizens will be first one to call the government anti- secular, blasphemous, as hurting Hindu sentiments and that govt. or minister will have to pack their bag. And why should we put our hopes on some government and NGO’s. Both of these are corrupt money making machines. They don’t care about the urine smell or Garbage. They have a huge pile of money to breathe on.

Is it only because we Indian pee-ple are just too dirty and we don’t have any regard for cleanliness? We are impatient too and have also adopted the “chalta hai” attitude. If anyhow we relieve in a neat public toilet we won’t bother to leave it as clean as they have received it. The condition is even not so good with toilets at work place of many of us which are even used by limited number of people. The metro toilets where people are been hired for cleaning the toilets and we are even being charged for using them are really in a condition many of us should better hold till we arrive at our place.
What we are doing? Insulting the nation? See it with the eye of a tourist from a developed country. I really don’t care if they get Delhi belly or they don’t like their stay amid the filth full streets and ‘paan’ stained historical building they visit. What concern me the most are their remarks they make through the pictures or blogs they post. And when other people get the idea that we do not know how to keep clean and need to be taught.

Coming to the pathetic sanitary condition of the Indian Railways, Be it inside the coaches or the within the station premise, the condition of sanitation in railways is pathetic. It is given almost last priority to sanitation in entire development of railways. The toilets even in ‘Rajdhani’ and ‘Shatabdi’ trains start smelling just after passing few stations. Hawkers at the station selling eatables can be seen standing with their stalls next to a stinking public toilet. Person having good sense of aesthetics can’t keep standing on the filthy stations watching the scenes of overflowing dustbins, open drain near platform, open defecation on the track and near station, solid waste on the track and spitting on platform.
For Indian Railways travelers it should be clearly understood that unless passengers share equal responsibility with the administration the goal of achieving complete sanitation in railways is hard to achieve. For legislation and policy makers things are needed to better look into engineering improvements where necessary. Besides, publicity campaigns and hygienic& cleanliness awareness are needed to be strengthened in the railways.

Trash-laden streets are not just the by-product of poor policy and legislation; they are largely a result of local attitudes and behaviors towards waste management. The underlying solution is simple – Behaviors and attitudes can be changed. What if we put the garbage only in the garbage bins and not around that? What if we lessen the dependency on MCD van to arrive and take away the garbage rotting for more than a week? And these efforts take little to no monetary investment; it may just take 2 hours of your weekend.
There are some group of people like ‘The Ugly Indian’ and ‘Kaam Admi Party’ who are doing an excellent job of cleaning the dump of garbage from streets  and making the filth ridden spaces accessible to walk on or plant trees or put a bench to sit on. The message is loud and clear - it can be done!

Policy makers have started many schemes like National Urban Sanitation Policy, Nirmal Bharat Abiyan, School Sanitation and Hygiene Education Program but these can only be successful if we want them to be successful and play a proactive role as we are cleaning our home.
We have celebrated ‘2008’ as ‘International Year of Sanitation’. Similarly, one of the targets set for the millennium development goal (MDG) by the members of United Nations is to ‘halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population spending their lives with basic sanitation. In view of this target, we can contribute our big share by just changing our attitude of not tolerating the filth or by educating people who are less aware of the things they needed to know. Where the things are too disgusting to start off, why not put your criminals to work. There is provision of punishments in many countries where people are sentenced to community service if they litter or do not leave toilets clean. Let’s all join, raise our concerns about our country! Let’s collectively design the India we all want! The change has to start from our self, from our homes for our and future generations.

There is no more time to put our hopes on government and NGO’s and foreign funds. Who else will clean your house if you yourself can’t.? it is time for introspection, for changing the attitude and it is time to pick up the broom for a clean and healthy India if you want your children to breathe in fresh and healthy country.