A few days ago, the Commonwealth Games (CWG) Organising Committee Secretary - General Lalith Bhanot, when asked if it was true that the residential blocks of the CWG Village were not clean, said, “For us and for you it is clean. But they (the foreign countries) have a different standard of cleanliness. It is a matter of difference in perception. Anyway, we have now upgraded the level of cleanliness which is acceptable to them.” Talk of insult to injury.
As if the CWG Committee had not embarrassed the nation enough, now they want to strip us of any little dignity that is left. Does this bureaucrat mean that we Indians all have sinks full of filth, love decorating our home walls with paan stains and sharing our beds with mangey dogs? Looks like he is confused with our sense of public hygiene and keeping a living space, such as home or apartment, clean.
Bhanot, not happy with the damage caused, gave a tailpiece, “It is not such a big issue which we should be ashamed of.” Yes, it is, Mr. Bhanot. We are hosting the Commonwealth Games not because we have too much money. We are hosting it to show the world that we are indeed a capable nation, a progressive nation, a nation that investors can trust.
CWG is an investment for our nation; it is a branding exercise to attract investors and tourists. We want the non - business world’s “perception” of us to move beyond the “Slumdog Millionaire” tag. Unfortunately, it looks like the CWG Committee has solidified this misconception.
Just because there is filth all around us in India, does not mean that we live in filthy homes or give dirty housing to our guests. Yes, India has a serious problem of maintaining cleanliness in public but then when it comes to home or living area, most of us do keep it clean. The poor, of course, find it hard to keep their living space clean as cleanliness becomes a luxury when one is languishing in poverty.
Indians have two cleanliness standards — one for the house and one for the road. We make our guests take off their shoes when they come to our house. Some businesses even make their clients take off their shoes when they come to the office. We step into the puja area only after a bath. Yes, we believe “cleanliness is next to godliness,” but only when it comes to our homes. Once outside, we spit, shit and piss with the same carefreeness and vigour of a canine. Yes, agreed it’s called the “nature’s call” but do we have to take it so literally as to relieve ourselves on the lap of mother nature?
In urban India, we lack civic sense and hygiene. My friend who is a pediatrician was once complaining about a parent who had brought her child to her clinic. While she was examining another child, she heard some sound coming from the corner of her office. When she turned around, she saw that the mother who was waiting had made her little daughter squat in the corner of the office and pee.
Most of us seem to think peeing and spitting are the same, it can be done in any place, any time. Since these days quite a few parents set bad examples, its better the schools start adding traffic rules and hygiene into the children’s curriculum.
Why don’t our leaders give us more toilets? After all, they travel so much during campaigning, I’m sure they have to relieve themselves at some point somewhere. I assumed they quietly sneak into a party worker’s house and do their business. I also wondered how hygienic their lifestyle is during campaigning as they have to touch, shake hands and eat in a very crowded, sweaty and dirty environment.
Then I read author Christopher Krimmer, who had gone with Rahul Gandhi on a campaign and wrote, “As we drove out of town, he (Rahul) seemed withdrawn. I thought it was due to his inability to connect with his audience. But a few kilometers along the road, he turned to Manoj Mathoo (a friend) and said, “I shook hands with a man back there. He had some kind of skin problem. Do you think I should wash my hands?” Then ruffling through the luggage, Manoj produced a bottle of disinfectant, a bowl and a bottle of mineral water with which Rahul decontaminated himself. Later, Manoj turned onto a narrow trail bringing us to a clearing dotted with Muah trees. “This looks like the best picnic spot so far”, said Rahul with an almost childish sense of fun and then proceeding to a small clearing with a stone wall surrounded with paddy, Rahul crouched, undid the cord of his pajama pants and relieved himself, while Manoj laid out a simple lunch.”
Looks like even the Congress Yuvraj knows that there is a shortage of clean toilets. A friend from Delhi told a similar story of Lalu Prasad Yadav on campaign. In one village, he wanted to pee very badly and due to the lack of toilets, was escorted behind a tree away from the crowd and a few of his people stood around to mask the event. It looked like he was having a discussion. So, mistakenly an enthusiastic group of women barged into the circle with aarthi for Lalu who was busy peeing. Lalu suddenly looked behind and seemed rather frustrated than angry or shocked. He supposedly said, “These people don’t even let me pee in peace.”
We must feel a special pity for women as they cannot relieve themselves as freely as men. Thank god, they still believe in dignity unlike men. It is very difficult especially for a poor woman to relieve herself whenever the need arises. Instead, the poor women have trained their bowels to kick-start at unearthly hours. In Mumbai, it is a known fact that women relieve themselves between 3 am and 5 am so the men don’t venture out to those areas. The same method is followed in the poor areas of Mysore.
So why don’t our leaders do something about it? We haven’t done much in terms of sanitation since the British left us. The British built the first sewerage system in India in 1870. Since then out of 4,500 cities, reportedly only about 250 have a sewer - system. Only 20 per cent of the urban population has septic tank toilets.
Our toilets are not keeping up with our population explosion. There are 700 million people with no toilets, which means it is inevitable but to “go public”. According to UNICEF, more than a 1,000 children in India die everyday of diarrhoea caused by lack of hygiene.
The government has approached Aamir Khan to be the brand ambassador for the Urban School Sanitation project. But if there are no clean toilets, then even Aamir Khan’s smile and antics cannot do much.
A clean - looking country is created when majority of the citizens have civic sense. As long as we have citizens who treat the public space like a toilet, as long as we have bureaucrats who assume that our need for cleanliness is lesser than that of a Westerner’s and as long as our leaders leave our sanitary needs to be met by mother nature, urban India’s streets will continue to reek of urine.
