Swaccha Bharat

[prasad1]

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[prasad1]

Embarrassing photographs have appeared in several newspapers that punch a big hole in the government’s Swachh Bharat campaign. The photographs show a worker at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Delhi deliberately dumping garbage at a spot on the campus and spreading it out before Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay and former AAP leader Shazia Ilmi make a show of cleaning it up. It is clear that the leaders were only interested in the photo-op and weren’t really serious about inspiring people to keep their surroundings clean.
If the Swachh Bharat campaign becomes nothing more than symbolism, the laudable objective of addressing sanitation issues will remain a pipe dream. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Clean India mission is extremely important. But a gaggle of politicians huddling around a spot and comically posing for photographs as they pretend to sweep away filth with brooms they clearly have never used in their lives is hardly going to transform India into the next Singapore. What we need are sound, scientific mechanisms to tackle sanitation problems and incentivise people to maintain cleanliness.
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Incentives can be a powerful tool to move people towards cleanliness.






This is best exemplified by the Meghalaya village of Mawlynnong. This picturesque hamlet nestled in the East Khasi Hills was declared the cleanest village in Asia by travel magazine Discover India in 2003. Although villages in Meghalaya (especially in the Khasi Hills) tend to be generally clean, Mawlynnong took inspiration from its cleanest village tag and decided to capitalise on it by taking sanitation standards to an even higher level. For, the residents of Mawlynnong realised that being clean could actually attract tourism to the village. Today, a steady flow of tourists to Mawlynnong throughout the year has transformed its economy, making it one of the richest villages in the region.
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If Swachh Bharat is to truly succeed it must go beyond mere symbolism. Otherwise, it runs the risk of becoming yet another government initiative that is high on intention but extremely poor on implementation.


Times Of India

 

[Iyyarooraan]

That is it. Gandhiji too tried in a no-plastic era. In fact he is the pioneer. There are conscious people who do not need teaching. But for the others nothing works; not even law.

 

[sangom]

Just as in the case of black money being brought back to the very last paisa, one rhetoric of the Modi campaign, is slowly but surely vanishing into thin air (Many of the names are repeats and many others have zero balance now!), this SB Abhiyaan will also become a clear "busvaaNam" as time goes. Modi does not seem to understand that in this country there are too many people and there is no place to dump the enormous amount of garbage generated daily, except perhaps the Thar desert. May be we can copy US' garbage train which dump the garbage in the Arizona deserts (I am told so.).

 

[prasad1]