The approach to the mission itself may soon prove to be a massive waste, inviting public criticism and hawkeyed CAG auditors’ remarks, as the expensive elitist campaign has had little impact on guttersiders, pig breeders, cattle keepers as well as the country’s wannabe plastic-bag-to-empty-food-packet-throwing consumers. It would take a lot more than daily TV ads in hundreds of channels and keeping Delhi’s government buildings, housing powerful ministries and establishments, important arteries and public thoroughfares regularly broomed to ensure Swachh Bharat.

On a recent 5,000-km-plus-long trail stretching from Delhi to Kolkata, Chennai, Puducherry and the west coast by rail, road and waterways, this writer was dazed with the monstrosity of the problem arising out of thousands of rotting garbage dumps everywhere with scavengers, rag-pickers, saleable-waste collectors, street dogs, pigs and carnivores combing through them for livelihood. With efforts, garbage dumps, authorized or unauthorized, could still be manageable. But, the biggest challenge is the continuously proliferating shanties erected by migrant labours and their families at the fringes of industrial locations, towns and cities having despicable sub-human living conditions. The management of used plastic bags, empty pet bottles and containers strewn around vast stretches, clogging open and covered drains, also pose a big challenge. The worst stretches are through UP, Bihar, Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Tamil Nadu, the Uttarakhand plains, Rajasthan, eastern Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the homes of some of the most illiterate and poorest of Indians. Punjab, Haryana, coastal states in western India such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka are comparatively cleaner. In fact, smaller Kerala, Goa, Puducherry, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and the north eastern states are among the cleanest. Tribal culture, traditionally focused on cleanliness, and better educational standards in most of these states seem to be responsible for swachh environment there.

Cleanliness is a state of mind and, very often, a reflection of culture. Kerala, Tripura and Goa villages are among the cleanest in the country. Education does help shape the mind and attitude towards cleanliness though not always. Bangalore, billed as India’s information technology capital, has some of the most putrid piles of garbage littered all around the town. Citizens ignore open dumps in their neighborhoods as a fixture of the tech city’s landscape. One expected better waste management and composting practices in ever expanding Bangalore, teeming with migrant millions and fortune seekers. Aswachh, or unclean, India is probably the world’s biggest breeding ground of hepatitis, dengue, malaria and other forms of bacterial and viral diseases that thrive on dirt and squalor. Thus, a swachh bharat could automatically mean a healthy India. A cultural change and public as well as official vigil preventing the sprouting of unhealthy slums under plastic sheds may help. The attitude that “ I am happy as long as my own dwelling is clean” must change to surroundings consciousness. It is not easy to bring about an attitudinal change among people in a complex country as Bharat where politicians promote and protect slums and propose to regularize them before elections. Mumbai’s Dharavi, once Asia’s biggest slum, has long been a Congress vote bank as Chennai’s Mylapore for AIADMK, Kolkata’s Shahid Smriti Colony at the south-eastern fringe for CPM and Delhi’s Yamuna Bank for Congress. Thus, a change in the political mindset is equally important to facilitate the mindset of others. The lackadaisical attitude of municipalities and panchayats towards cleanliness, borne out of lack of political will and police and political corruption, is also a challenger to the Swachh Bharat concept.

The success of Swachh Bharat campaign will entirely depend on the government’s ability to change the mindset of the people, politicians of all hues and administration at every level, starting from the bottom and improve the living conditions at villages, create job opportunities there to discourage migration. Populous China had long banned rural migration by opening up opportunities in villages and rural areas. The same may not be possible in democratic India. But, it may be high time to plan and create job opportunities for the rural poor by imparting technical education and skill development. Swachh Bharat should be bottom blown and not top-down, Delhi-driven that had, in the past, ensured failure of most of the central anti-poverty initiatives.

The proposed national Swachh cess, like education cess, may not be a good idea to fund the programme. Instead, panchayats and municipalities may be encouraged to tax citizens to keep their areas clean and provide incentives to citizens by way of municipal tax cuts to areas that are clean and follow waste disposal norms. On the other hand, municipalities and panchayats can make good money out of a scientific waste management. In the US, the world’s biggest waste generator, the garbage management is said to be a $70-billion industry. Can Swachh Bharat too turn garbage into gold? Looks difficult, as of now, though not impossible, in the near future. (IPA Service)