Clean up

Although I am not a Modi Bhakt, but I think he is striking the right chord with his Clean India campaign. He is telling us what we all already knew but never wanted to accept, that India is dirty and our cities, towns and villages are filled with filth of which we have become habitual. I think we might be the only race in the world which is so clean, and yet so dirty. Most of us have extremely good hygiene habits, which includes taking bath every day, irrespective of the weather. We keep ourselves in good form by neatly combing hair and ensuring that our nails are clipped properly, a habit which is inculcated in us by our parents with love, or by our school teachers with force. We are a well bathed and neat nation as far as people are concerned, however it’s a different story as far as our streets, parks and public transports are concerned.  What happens to us when it comes to keeping our community clean?

We are governed by a principle as far as community cleanliness is concerned and that is, “Dustbin begins where my home ends” , we ensure that our houses are cleaned daily by the maids who are paid exactly for this purpose, but it doesn’t matter what happens to that garbage once it leaves our house. It doesn’t matter if it’s thrown in the dustbin or just lies in a corner of a street. We don’t care if the streets becomes filthy with the used bottles, soda cans or chips packet wrappers as long as the interiors of our car are clean, the concept of detachment from Bhagwad Gita have never been understood so well anywhere else around the world.

This make me very nervous about the success of the campaign launched with so much fanfare by our beloved PM, actually this and some other facts which are beyond the scope of this posting. I am sure we will succeed in cleaning up lots of nooks and corners of our country which may not have seen daylight since ages, but it should not follow the law of conservation of Garbage in India, that “the garbage can be created, but can’t be destroyed, it will just change its place from one corner to the other”, if this law gets applied in this whole campaign, then the only good which will come out of this will be some political mileage to few of our  nation loving netas who will not leave any photo op, to ensure that we know how dedicated they are to this task, to get votes and Mr. PM knows about it too, so that their political future may take a leap.

I want this to succeed from the bottom of my heart, because i want to live in a cleaner India, but to ensure that we need to make it very clear to everyone, clean India doesn’t only mean clean homes, it means clean streets, clean buses/trains, clean park, clean lakes and much more. I guess time for us to prove the law of conservation of garbage wrong, we will not get a noble prize for that, but will get much bigger prize, a better and cleaner country of which we can be proud of.