Swachh Abhiyan inspires devotees on Gurpurab eve

Maria Akram, TNN | Nov 6, 2014, 12.04AM IST

Swachh Bharat drive

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is finding resonance among people and it was witnessed probably for the first time in a religious procession. When a procession on the occasion of Gurpurab was taken out in Chandni Chowk, people, especially the young men and women, started cleaning the littered roads.

Every year a lot of devotees from Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, Chandni Chowk to Gurdwara Nank Piao near Rana Pratap Bagh go distributing food items, fruits, sweets as prasad along the way. Usually, the entire route is littered with paper plates and cups which are cleaned the next morning by the sanitation staff.

"It is for the first time that such a thing is witnessed in the past five decades. A group of 50 young boys and girls cleaned the entire area and carried the waste in mini-trucks moving along with the procession.

The group also cleaned pavements and picked up garbage lying unattended. The stretch was spic and span after the procession was over," said Sanjay Bhargava, general secretary, Chandni Chowk Sarv Vyapar Mandal.

Impressed by such efforts, people in Chandni Chowk have suggested that North Corporation make it a norm. "Religious processions, immersion in Yamuna and bhandaras and langar in public places ruin the area. This initiative should be welcomed and made mandatory," said Bhargava.

A similar proposal was mooted by the municipal commissioner in 2013 in the form of sanitation cess, by penalizing people who litter after holding religious functions in public areas. "But the proposal was rejected. It is good if people are becoming aware and taking initiatives on their own," said a senior North Corporation official.

When asked, some members in the procession said it is not just seva for them but an effort to keep Delhi clean. "In our religion we have seva. It's better to clean the streets that we litter. In other countries too people clean the area after events," said Gurmeet Kaur, who was sweeping the road

Ward Watch: A risky and slushy place along the Vaigai: Tamil Nadu

A dangerous sewage channel with no walls or fence is located in Subedar Thoppu 
By S. Poorvaja, www.thehindu.com   November 4, 2014

For vehicle users and pedestrians who have to pass through Subedar Thoppu in Pankajam Colony, safety has become a thing of the past. A sewage channel for the area, which originates in the street, is dangerously located with no walls or a fence, putting the lives of people at risk.

“The open drain has been lying exposed for years without a fence or a wall. This road is used by a number of schoolchildren as well as persons who come to the butcher and provision shop located here. They are at a constant risk of falling into it,” said M. Ponraj, a resident.  The residents of Ward 53, where the open sewage channel is located, claimed that sewage had been lying stagnant for years. “It has also contaminated groundwater and often a stench emanates from the water we use at home,” Mr. Ponraj added. The residents said they made a request for a protective wall or a concrete slab to cover the channel to prevent the risk of people or vehicles falling into it. Ward councillor Thangam Dhakshinamoorthy from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam said a proposal had been submitted to the corporation authorities but to no avail.

“We also received complaints about mosquito problems because of stagnant sewage. Work needs to be taken up immediately on the sewage channel but the corporation has not allocated funds for the ward,” she said. The ward, which includes the sprawling Teppakulam, has many of its roads in a pathetic condition, pointed out the councillor herself. The residents further stated that no road had been laid in the last three years. “The bus stop near Nirmala Girls Higher Secondary School on Kamarajar Salai gets flooded the minute it starts raining. After repeated requests for repair work, a proposal has finally been accepted and work will begin soon,” Ms. Thangam said.

Residents of Pankajam Colony, Vadivel Nagar, A.A. Road and Thangam Nagar unequivocally called for attention to the condition of roads. “There is water stagnation whenever it rains on our narrow streets which are thickly populated as well,” said P. Pandiammal, a resident of Pankajam Colony First Street.

Safety concerns

Since a chunk of the ward’s area lies along the banks of the Vaigai, residents are also concerned about safety. “There used to be police patrol in the area at least twice a day. Police personnel used to be stationed at vulnerable areas. In their absence, chain-snatching and petty thefts are on the rise,” said N. Vanniarajan, a snack vendor.

“We used to go for walk early in the morning and in the evening, but we now find it difficult to venture out, as antisocial elements also frequent the road along the riverbank,” he added. Residents along the riverbank further stated that streetlights in the area too had stopped functioning. “While we have tried to solve small issues of residents here, we are often sidelined when it comes to allotment of funds since we are not from the ruling party,” alleged Ms. Thangam.

“Even the allotments our neighbouring wards 51 and 52 receive do not come to ward 53. Only if the ward is considered for infrastructure improvement – projects such as laying of paver block roads – will our residents be satisfied,” she added.

Swachh Bharat: a scheme or a pipe dream?

Pushpa M. Bhargava, The Hindu, November 3, 2014
 

Comments (126)   

By AP

“We cannot talk of Swachh Bharat, ignoring what happens in our villages where poverty is the greatest polluter.”

 

If Prime Minister Modi is serious about Swachh Bharat, he must provide leadership in converting the slogan into a viable multi-faceted programme

Who does not want, or hasn’t wanted, a clean India the public places of which are today probably the dirtiest and the most polluted in the world? 

The question one must ask is: why it has been so, and what has not been done to change the situation for the better? Otherwise, Swachh Bharat will only remain a slogan, like Indira Gandhi’s ‘Garibi Hatao.’ She was very upset when I once asked her in all humility what exactly she wanted to hatao (eradicate), what she wanted to replace it with, and how.

It is strange that while much has been said about Swachh Bharat, no one appears to have pointed out that Indians are traditionally and culturally clean people. If the country looks dirty to a visitor — as it truly is — the biggest culprit is the government which is unclean in ways more than one!

Just drive from the old airport in my city, Hyderabad, to the new airport via Tarnaka (a distance of 50 km). Sidewalks, if they are there, are broken, encroached, or otherwise dysfunctional. There are mounds of mud and garbage on the side of the road which have been there for years. The buildings acquired to widen the road have not been demolished and have remained abandoned for years.

There is leftover construction material such as broken stones that line the pavements of roads. Whenever there is construction, one often finds unnecessary encroachment. In many places, road dividers are non-functional. The poor condition of roads can lead to numerous health issues for users. Even elite residential localities do not seem to be free of these problems. 

Non-functional municipality

The fact is that there is no professional expertise in the Municipal Corporation to keep the city clean. Combined with total apathy, it creates an irremediable situation.

This deplorable situation is compounded by corruption. There is virtually no supervision when a civil work contract is given by the Municipal Corporation or Municipality, for example, for road repair. It is the responsibility of the contractor to remove all the construction material or waste, but it is just pushed to the side of the road to save money that would be otherwise spent on its transportation and disposal — and no one cares. Not surprisingly the only places that are clean are the military and the defence areas. Common garbage bins, where they are provided by the government, are overflowing, besides being an eyesore. The fact is that once you leave areas which come within the purview of civil administration, India is substantially clean. We are thus a country where ‘private’ places are clean but ‘public’ places are dirty.

It is not that the citizens in our cities and towns do not contribute to public filth. They do and there are two reasons for that. Firstly, there are no waste bins in public places where people can dispose their waste, so they simply throw it on the road or the sidewalk if it exists. 

Secondly, it is about human psychology. If the place is clean and maintained clean, the tendency of a visitor or a user is not to make it dirty. On the other hand, if the place is already dirty, the tendency is not to worry about making it dirtier. In this connection, let me share an experience. In Hyderabad, we have a scientific research laboratory called the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB). It has been around for more than 25 years and has had an unbroken tradition of clinical cleanliness.

Once a year, it has an open day when more than 10,000 visitors come to the laboratory. At the end of the day, when all the visitors have gone, the place is just as clean as it was to begin with. The visitors simply use the waste bins which are always within sight no matter where the visitors are in the campus. Deep in their mind, they do not want to dirty a place which looks spotlessly clean. Kolkata metro would be another example.

How then can we talk of Swachh Bharat when the majority in the country has no access to clean toilets, and the environment is so badly polluted? As far as I know, there is much talk but no detailed workable solution to provide clean toilet facility to every family — either in villages or in cities. Every politician wants to do it but nobody really does it or even has an idea of how to go about doing it. Operationally, it is not easy.

As an example of the government’s apathy toward clean toilets, let me cite the case of the erstwhile Paryavaran Bhawan in the CGO Complex at Lodi Road, New Delhi. I used to visit the sixth floor of this building to attend a meeting of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), generally once a month. The only common western-style toilet on this floor had no seat for as long as I could remember. If I needed to use one, I had to request for permission of the Additional Secretary of the Department of Environment and Forests who was the Chairman of GEAC, to allow me to use his private toilet. And to expect toilet paper in a western-style toilet in a government building is to ask for the Moon.

Needed, a holistic definition

Then, there is the question of environment. Can we really have Swachh Bharat when our environment is so polluted? 

Finally, we have to consider the state of our villages where 70 per cent of India lives. Can we talk of Swachh Bharat, ignoring what happens in our villages where poverty is the greatest polluter? Can any scheme of cleaning up our villages be viable if, for example, we do not provide village children access to high-quality schools? Doesn’t education, including vocational education, provide the greatest resource for alleviating poverty? Thus, to think of Swachh Bharat as an achievable objective would be a folly unless equal emphasis is laid on several other objectives such as high-quality universal education.

If Prime Minister Narendra Modi is serious about Swachh Bharat, he must provide leadership in converting what is a slogan into a viable multi-faceted programme, no matter how difficult or challenging it is going to be.

(Pushpa Mittra Bhargava is Chairman, Council of Social Development, Southern Regional Centre.)

126 Comments

Will the new broom sweep clean?

• By Smriti Kak Ramachandran,   www.thehindu.com   October 27th, 2014

The Hindu Led by the Union government, the the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan envisages cleaning every street and corner of the country and in doing so, putting India on the road map to better health and living conditions. Photo by: The Hindu

Cleanliness is ‘very big work’ for the Prime Minister and hence the emphasis on the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The effects of the campaign will primarily be improved hygiene and health, but will go beyond to give a fillip to various sectors of the economy.

Within days of coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi left many stumped when he chose to address the issue of cleanliness in the country. Even as he spoke of nursing the economy back to health and putting the country on the trajectory of growth, he set a task of “cleaning” India by 2019.

That the issues of cleanliness and sanitation were not perfunctory for him was evident when, in his Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort, he questioned whether Indians still wanted to live in filthiness.

Pre-empting questions about why a Prime Minister should focus on “cleanliness” when he had pressing issues posed by the economy, national security and electoral politics to attend to, he had a ready reply. “People may feel that it is a trivial work for a Prime Minister, but for me, this is big work. Cleanliness is very big work ... If 125 crore countrymen decide that they will never spread filth, which power in the world has the ability to spread filth in our cities and villages? Can’t we resolve this much?”

That was the cue for the rolling out of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA), which envisages a “Clean India” by 2019.

Led by the Union government, the SBA envisages cleaning every street and corner of the country and in doing so, putting India on the road map to better health and living conditions.

From the time the SBA was flagged off — with Mr. Modi himself wielding the broom — the campaign has not only been a diktat for the Babus to follow or schoolchildren to engage in, but has also drawn the attention of big businesses, IT giants, non-governmental organisations and the private sector, all rolling up their sleeves to be part of this humongous campaign.

If there is a section that says the SBA is mere symbolism, pointing out that sweeping alone cannot address the issue of mounting waste and debris, there is jubilation across the Health and Family Welfare Ministry, the tourism sector and the Urban and Rural Development Ministries for the benefits which the Clean India campaign brings to their respective areas.

“The Prime Minister’s ‘Clean India’ campaign is a big boost for us. Cleanliness brings down the disease burden. If we clean our hospitals and the areas around them, we will automatically bring down the spending on diseases as well. It is a win-win for everyone,” Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan said.

A senior official of the Tourism Ministry said the SBA would give a fillip to India’s campaign to attract tourists. “Even our best promoted tourist destinations are not clean. Look at the Taj Mahal, the roads leading up to the world famous monument are an eyesore. Our holy cities are swathed in waste. Take Varanasi, for example; it draws crowds in millions from every part of the world, but is considered one of the most unclean cities with no waste management. This campaign is a lifeline for the tourism sector, a sunrise sector in India,” the official said.

Blueprints have been drawn up by all government departments to converge with the larger Mission. And to ensure that the SBA goes beyond mere planning and photo-ops, there is intensive monitoring of the work being undertaken.

Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu recently chaired a meeting to take stock of the implementation of the SBA, days after it was flagged off. “The SBA has been launched with good initial impact, but the issue is how to sustain this, how to plan for identified outcomes, how to monitor and coordinate with the States on a regular basis,” he said.

The Minister now calls a meeting daily to monitor the progress of, and to plan for, the SBA. The Ministry has enabled an online platform to allow citizens to network with each other locally and at the national level to follow up on the cleanliness initiative. A national circle, “Swachh Bharat,” has been launched, which already has 1.7 lakh members to exchange ideas on cleanliness, take up appropriate cleanliness activities in their neighborhoods, share pictures of collective efforts, engage with elected representatives and take the cleanliness campaign forward.

The non-governmental sector, which has been pursuing governments to take up the issues of sanitation, has been eager to partner in the endeavor. Offering suggestions to take the SBA forward, Bharati Chaturvedi, director of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, says: “There can be no real solution to waste without waste reduction. We need extended producer responsibility, or making the manufacturer responsible. Existing rules (Plastic Waste [Management and Handling] Rules, 2011) already prescribe EPR for plastic bags and multi-layered packaging, such as chips. This has not been done. It must be started today.”

The Prime Minister’s wish for the Mission to become the agenda of the entire country, it seems, is already under way.

UNICEF offers support to Clean India Mission

Reuters On October 2, Modi launched the ambitious Swachh Bharat campaign that was joined by Chief Ministers, lawmakers and prominent personalities from various fields. 

  By Pti, By PTI,www.thehindu.com

• October 27th, 2014

 

UNICEF on Monday hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious ‘Swachh Bharat’ mission and offered its support to the government to successfully implement the programme, particularly in rural India. “We are really welcoming this initiative....We are really putting everything we can to support this initiative,” UNICEF India Representative Louis-Georges Arsenault said in New Delhi. Noting that hygiene and sanitation in many Indian districts, particularly in Uttar Pradesh are “very weak,” Arsenault expressed hope that the new initiative would help spread awareness among people about hygiene in their surroundings.

He was reacting to a question on UNICEF’s role in cleanliness and the new initiative of the government. UNICEF officials said that the organisation’s long standing support for improving water supply, sanitation and hygiene stems from a firm conviction and based on sound evidence that these are central to ensuring the rights of children.

UNICEF supports the Centre and State Governments in developing and implementing a range of replicable intervention models for sanitation, hygiene and water supply. 

On October 2, Modi launched the ambitious Swachh Bharat campaign that was joined by Chief Ministers, lawmakers and prominent personalities from various fields, along with lakhs of countrymen in a drive that is expected to cost nearly Rs, 2 lakh crore.

UNICEF offers support to Clean India Mission

By Pti, www.thehindu.com  October 27th, 2014 

 

 

Reuters On October 2, Modi launched the ambitious Swachh Bharat campaign that was joined by Chief Ministers, lawmakers and prominent personalities from various fields. 

 

UNICEF on Monday hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious ‘Swachh Bharat’ mission and offered its support to the government to successfully implement the programme, particularly in rural India.

“We are really welcoming this initiative....We are really putting everything we can to support this initiative,” UNICEF India Representative Louis-Georges Arsenault said in New Delhi.

Noting that hygiene and sanitation in many Indian districts, particularly in Uttar Pradesh are “very weak,” Arsenault expressed hope that the new initiative would help spread awareness among people about hygiene in their surroundings.

He was reacting to a question on UNICEF’s role in cleanliness and the new initiative of the government.

UNICEF officials said that the organisation’s long standing support for improving water supply, sanitation and hygiene stems from a firm conviction and based on sound evidence that these are central to ensuring the rights of children.

UNICEF supports the Centre and State Governments in developing and implementing a range of replicable intervention models for sanitation, hygiene and water supply.

On October 2, Modi launched the ambitious Swachh Bharat campaign that was joined by Chief Ministers, lawmakers and prominent personalities from various fields, along with lakhs of countrymen in a drive that is expected to cost nearly Rs, 2 lakh crore.

Despite Swachh Bharat, taking 'Poo to the Loo' isn't easy ...

Zia Haq, Hindustan Times  New Delhi, October 26, 2014

 

Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency, last year launched a public service advert in India through
a character called Poo, with the tagline — ‘It’s time to take Poo to the Loo’. The target was open
defecation, a serious problem.

Taking Poo to the toilet, it turns out, is a formidable task before the Modi government.

About 40% of rural households in UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana that have a
functioning toilet still have a “revealed preference” for open defecation, a new study has found.
Unicef estimates close to 600 million Indians practise open defecation, piling up more than 143 million
pounds of solid human waste and putting the public at risk for “life-threatening infections, diseases and
epidemics”.

Just giving people a toilet, as announced by Prime Minister Modi, isn’t going to work unless appropriate
strategies are drawn up, researchers associated with the study point out. Nearly 47% of those surveyed
said defecating in the open was “pleasurable, comfortable, or convenient”. Some considered open
defecation as a way to a “wholesome, healthy virtuous life”.

Experts say strategies have to go beyond mere campaigning and include surveys to track changes in open
defecation. “The government cannot credibly claim to be attempting to end open defecation by 2019 or
any year if it is not measuring and monitoring it,” Princeton economist Diane Coffey, lead researcher of
the study, told HT.

India has increased access to toilets since 1990, when 75% of the population defecated in the open,
mainly through government-built toilets.

That doesn’t mean people are using them. According to Unicef’s 2014 Drinking Water and Sanitation
Update, “India continues to be the country with the highest number of people (597 million) practising
open defecation”.