Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started a nationwide Swachhta Abhiyan soon after taking over the reins of the country on October 2, 2014, giving a valuable message of ensuring cleanliness across the country. The issue raised by the Prime Minister at that time was quite meaningful and even those who were his strongest critics started supporting him in this endeavour.
Although the idea was precisely perfect, but today if one sees the change except entities organizing cleanliness drives and rhetoric on the issue, nothing much has been changed as still there are piles of garbage in and around cities, people have not stopped littering at public places and above all the waste management is still at infancy stage at most of the places.
As tomorrow is Gandhi Jayanti, the anniversary of the important initiative taken up by PM Modi viz Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, it becomes necessary that the citizens should take the responsibility now and start thinking beyond cleanliness drives which are being conducted with much fanfare with schoolchildren with placards, volunteers sweeping streets, and officials posing with brooms for photo opportunities. While these initiatives have certainly helped in raising awareness about hygiene and sanitation but now the time has come to ponder that why do we need cleanliness drives at all?
Until and unless, the root cause will not be addressed, one should not expect much from these cleanliness drives and rhetoric on making Indian Swachh. One can see markets loaded with filth every evening, people throwing wrappers and other waste on roads from their cars, trash on railway tracks and near bus stands are all hinting that the society has not moved even an inch after 2014, when the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was started and therefore it is necessary to once again dwell on the issue and move a step further with citizens taking pledge to stop littering without any exception. The root cause is the habit of littering and that should be addressed to make India clean as cleanliness drives can do little in this endeavour.
All said and done, it’s the time to eliminate the need for cleanliness drives altogether by ensuring that the very need for such interventions should get eliminated and this can only happen when citizens will understand that public spaces are shared spaces, and respect for these spaces is the responsibility of all.
