My team of Indian engineers was
once introduced to the employees of a German company. We were expected to work
closely together. The get-together was thought to serve as the icebreaker for a
great partnership. A German, who had visited India a number of times to settle
the deal, took the lead in explaining the Indian way of living to his
colleagues.
"Indians associate 'clean'
with 'wet'," he started. "Once I asked for my bathroom to be cleaned,
and it was made wet all over. Indians believe in washing and leaving things wet
..," he went on.
Fifty amused pairs of German eyes
were directed at the Indian contingent. Embarrassed, I looked at my colleague
who was busy in chomping snacks with the tastiest beer we ever had. I felt
insulted, but the German was making a valid point. Whether it is a temple, a
shop-front, or a car, we soak the object with copious amounts of water and leave
puddles of dirty water everywhere. Our sense of cleanliness does not allow us
to put
the lid back on the
toilet after use, and some of us feel shy of even using the flush. I have often
been disgusted on finding used toilet papers scattered on the floor in
aeroplane facilities.
A 'swachchhata abhiyaan' or
cleanliness drive is on in India for some years now. People are being persuaded
against defecating in the open. Toilets and urinals are being built and women
are being allowed the privilege of using toilets in restaurants and hotels even
if they don't buy anything there. Two public urinals, both with maroon spotted
tiles, have sprung up at strategic spots in my locality. The one in a park
faces a bakery. The other, on a road-crossing, is near a shopping complex that
also houses a snack maker. One needs absolute courage and determination or utter
desperation to use these urinals—the stench is so overbearing!
Gearing up for action, municipal
authorities have used excavators to break covers on rainwater drains and expose
the black dirty water to the atmosphere. Slush has been removed and left on the
roads. Ten days later, scourges of mosquitoes dance over open drains heralding
the onset of dengue and other diseases. Stray dogs judge the slush on the road
as the perfect spot to relieve themselves. Vehicles catch the filth in their tyres
and spread it to various destinations.
Does cleanliness mean making an
area filthy and disease prone? Should good ideas be killed with idiotic
understanding and third rate executions?
I do not blame the excavator
operator who carried out the assignment, but wonder why the municipal authority
did not make arrangements for the disposal of the muck? Are they confident that
the entire garbage will vanish in a few months by flowing back into the drain
or being carried to different homes? Or, is it a case of a faulted concept of
cleanliness?
संदेश
