Baby steps... please work out of your shells
One
year to
Swachh
Bharat
Abhiyan
and its
outcome
in Delhi
“Delhi is a dirty city”, well these
were the words of Queen of Great
Britain Elizabeth when she came
and saw our Delhi. Personally I
would say that she should visit Delhi again and repeat her words as it
might affect many more Delhiites.
Some might be busy trending it on
social platforms and other might
get influenced by it and they may
add in their efforts to make Delhi
cleaner in practical life. Reasons for
her words could be as she might
have seen someone urinating in the
open or someone chewing paan
Clean INDIA 6
“Cleaning up the country cannot be the sole responsibility of
sweepers. Do citizens have no
role in this? We have to change
this mindset.”
- PM. Narendra Modi
and spitting it on walls, roads or
any other public place.
It has been almost a year and a half
to Swachh Bharat Abhiyan when
3 million government employees, school & college students and
teachers and nominated celebrities
raised their hand and took a Swachh pledge to make this initiative as
work of their life. But now it seems
that it was just a task only for that
day. With Sanitation workers performing their regular duty who too
went on strike as their salaries were
not paid by their corporations due
to lack of funds from Delhi government. When Delhi chief minister
agreed to participate in this campaign he said that such ‘Symbolic
gestures’ cannot make India clean.
One reason why the campaign still
hasn’t achieved any milestone is
lack of funds, and now if the
government is
not
providing
adequate funds
to Municipal
Corporations,
who are the
major players in making a
city clean, then how can
we expect that we
would make Delhi clean.
Making Delhi or entire
country clean is
just not the
duty of government alone nor it’s
going to be a miracle. We all must
remember that each one of us took
a swachh pledge and committed
ourselves that we will devote some
of our time towards cleanliness.
Now the time has come where we
all individuals need to collaborate
to work on this project as to make
this campaign successful in the
upcoming years. Many people may
feel that they haven’t taken this
pledge nor do they have any time
for this project, so why should they
contribute or devote their time for
this project. However this would
be a myopic thinking just treat this
project as a national duty and also
improve your civic sense because
that too deals with the same.
It’s not that government is not doing anything, but after a year government realized that
more needs to be done
and to raise more funds
for this project they have
levied Swachh Bharat Cess.
More funds are need
ed for this project
since any strike by
the sanitation
workers can
crash Swachh
Bharat initiative
in urban areas
due to inadequate
funds to Municipalities.
Brent Council of Wembley London
claims that immigrants from India
and other parts of South Asia have
eternal problem of spitting paan
juice on the streets and to tackle this problem “Don’t spit paan”
campaign is being run. If we see in
Delhi we can easily find a paan corner or shop near a bus stand or red
light and even in many malls. Many
Delhiites are addicted to eating and
spitting paan juice wherever they
feel like be it a park, market, public
toilets or metro stations. It’s not
only with people of Delhi but with
most of the paan eaters. They aren’t
ashamed of doing these uncivilized
acts as they do not realize as it is
not possible to remove paan stains
till that area is painted again.
It would be natural to ask a simple
questions as to why the government
has not banned spitting and selling
of paan even after knowing that it is
one of the most important reasons
for the roads, streets, lanes and other public place of not being clean.
Well the government has already
launched ‘Anti-Spitting Drive’ under Swachh Bharat Drive but many
people might not be aware of this
drive since they haven’t been fined
for spitting. It is not only spitting
but very oftenly we will find people urinating in the open and even
defecating.
Through these uncivilized acts we
are causing harm not only to the
present people and to ourselves
living in this environment but we
may be creating a danger for coming generation. It’s believed that by
2025 India would be the country
with maximum number of youths
and we all know youth are the one
who play important role in the development of any country. So why
not to start by educating children
who will be known as country’s
youth and it is only possible
7
Clean INDIA
through schools. There is no doubt
that schools are making efforts
in educating children about the
importance of hygiene but not with
requiste stress.
Many photo ops were done during
launch of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan
of politicians, celebrities, and high
profile businessman. But we never
tried a photo-op of those sanitation
workers who day after day pick garbage and clear streets and roads for
very meager salary. They include
some workers who go inside a gutter for cleaning them and collecting
sewage without
any protective
clothes and
masks. Our
reaction towards
these
people
is mostly
to cover our
nose and quickly pass through
them never realizing that how important work they were
doing for the society.
If people begin to understand and give importance to the sanitary
workers that they deserve things
may improve drastically. These sanitary workers are no less than the
sodiers on the