Prime minister Narendra Modi has given a call for making India a swachh or clean nation and giving this as a gift to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birthday in 2019. To the Mahatma cleanliness was not only a fetish, it was his symbolic way of trying to eliminate the caste system. One reason why India is not a healthy country is that our human settlements are not clean, many people do not have pure drinking water, garbage collects and putrefies, giving birth to noxious insects, vector-borne diseases and pathogens. A few simple steps to achieve civic hygiene and sanitation would, as Modi has said, contribute greatly to primary health care in India.
A country is only as clean as its citizens decide, but for citizens to be collectively responsible for cleanliness there has to be a physical environment and infrastructure which promotes cleanliness. Switzerland, a mountainous country with a temperate, even cold climate with a low density of population, is considered one of the cleanest nations in the world. The civic infrastructure is of a very high order and this, in turn, encourages people to become partners in keeping the country clean. Those who deviate from the norm are taken care of by the law and, therefore, by habit, by inclination and by action of the law enforcement agencies the Swiss are a clean people. At the other end of the spectrum is the hot, humid, almost equatorial island city state of Singapore. Its population density is high, though population control measures have at least stabilised the figures. The hot and humid country leads both to fecundity and rapid decay and, therefore, any dirt or garbage quickly putrefies and, if not collected and disposed of, it gives rise to insect pests and pathogens. Singapore, a country that is flat and almost at sea level, has an excellent sewage and drainage system that collects all sewage, subjects it to complete treatment and also ensures that all waste water is collected and drained away for final disposal. The drinking water supply is also pure. The government ensures garbage is separated into biodegradable, recycleable and non-recycleable waste, it is properly deposited and collected for final disposal and there is no dirt on the streets. There are very heavy penalties for littering and the law is rigidly enforced. Singapore, therefore, is a spotlessly clean country; water-borne and vector-borne diseases are not only under control but almost unknown and citizens are healthy.
India is a land of paradoxes. The average India is fastidiously clean in terms of bodily hygiene and the interior of his house. He is utterly irresponsible regarding his civic duties so far as public space is concerned. That is why he throws garbage anywhere, defecates in the open, feels free to spit on the streets and generally behaves in a manner for which he’d be arrested in any other nation. That is why there are heaps of rotting garbage everywhere and swarms of mosquitoes, flies, etc. We have a very high rate of water-borne gastroenteric diseases and vector-borne diseases. Therefore, the call for a clean Bharat could not have come at a more opportune time. But it is also necessary to appreciate certain hard facts which contribute to the generally unsanitary conditions in India.
We can start with water supply, which for a very large proportion is either not available or comes from polluted sources and isn’t adequately treated and safely delivered. Vast numbers of households do not have any sanitary arrangement by way of a proper toilet in which night soil is piped away and suitably treated. If there are no toilets, is it surprising that there is open defecation? In those city areas where there is a sewage system much of it is obsolete and inadequate to serve a burgeoning population. Sewage treatment plants are obviously unequal to their task and, therefore, a great deal of untreated sewage is discharged into water bodies. Many new housing colonies are dependent on some sort of primary treatment by localised systems-based septic tanks. On a small scale or at an individual household-level in a small community this may work, but when it covers a huge population the septic tank system totally fails. If India is to be clean then Modi’s call for a toilet in every home and adequate such facilities in all schools, together with proper garbage collection and treatment of sewage, must get a very high priority. A Swachh India without adequate and proper toilet facilities is a contradiction in terms.
All our dignitaries are shown sweeping streets which in any case are reasonably well-covered by the municipal conservancy staff. What about the slums? Most slum housing is jerry-built of mud, locally available material and junk. Individual structures are so nondescript as not to invite attention, perhaps even visibility. What makes a slum noxious is the sheer overcrowding, lack of basic facilities, resulting in collection of stagnant pools of filthy water—a breeding ground of mosquitoes—together with heaps of garbage on which pigs and ragpickers root alike. Why do we not see photographs of our leaders trying to dig a drain to carry away the dirty water? Or dirty their hand in lifting garbage that smells so bad that even seeing it from afar is disgusting? Why does the municipality not run a proper conservancy service in such areas? Let me give two examples from Bhopal. Panchsheel Nagar was developed in the early Seventies as a sites and services programme for slum-dwellers. Over time people built pucca houses and the whole area, because it has basic civic services, is a low-income group locality that is quite livable. Behind it a slum came up with no services and even from the road the contrast between the two is visible. Can the people of this locality contribute to Swachh India unless they are provided at least basic services? Another example is that of a nullah serving three sectors of the upmarket Arera Colony. Part of it has been built upon so that the waterway is constricted. Partly choked by garbage, its flow is impeded, it inundates residential areas during monsoon and stinks at all times. If the municipality cannot handle a slum on the one hand and a high-income residential area on the other, can we expect India to be clean?
The citizens deserve access to at least the basic civic services. They must be assured safe water supply, there must be sewage and drainage, garbage must be deposited at designated spots and collected regularly and the disposal of all waste must be done in a hygienic and scientific manner. It is then that we can expect citizen partnership in keeping Bharat clean and it is then that we can penalise those who deviate. This would include municipalities and panchayats. The campaign has to be serious because it isn’t Mardi Gras.
M N Buch, a former civil servant, is chairman, National Centre for Human Settlements and Environment, Bhopal;
E-mail: buchnchse@yahoo.com