Childhood, Mindset & Garbage

In India traditionally, waste has been looked at in two distinct ways, one which you can sell to your local scrap dealer and the other which is kept at arm’s length to be dealt with by a certain class of individuals. As kids growing up, many, if not all of us have seen the familiar sight of our mothers carefully keeping aside newspapers, milk pouches and iron to be sold to the local scrap dealers for hard cash. As kids many of us probably have never taken our own waste out and handed it over to the waste collector, or emptied it at the local community dump. Forget that, but many probably have never even picked up their plate and emptied out the left overs in the bin and then rinsed the plate with water. The social and cultural stigma attached to this practice has been historically embedded in our brains since the time when our caste-system decided what we could or could not do. Though a lot has changed since then, the dogma associated with waste has continued to haunt us. As the young grow older and enter the work force, they bring with them a certain predisposed mindset concerning how waste should be managed and dealt with, which is one of the major reasons as to why I feel companies have the outlook they have when dealing with their waste. 

An organisation is the cumulative thought process of its entire work force, from the bottom to the top management. In order for us to progress towards implementing change in our organization, we must start with unlearning certain habits, change our perception of how we determine others value based on preconceived notions that we hold and consider to be so true. Relating this to how companies manage their waste, and the overall situation of waste management in the country, we have massive a transformation that needs to be undertaken, that is; the tough task of changing people’s mindsets & that of teaching the younger generation the value of doing household chores from a young age. 

Where and how do we start? Bringing any transformation, or change requires us to continuously keep asking the question why, till we just cannot answer the why any more. I have done this exercise and arrived at my why? From a young age majority of us have been exposed to a certain way of life and thinking. We learn things looking at how are parents act, friends at school act, what is taught to us in textbooks in school and colleges. It does not matter how old you are right now, who you are as a person has a lot to do with your childhood. Revisiting your childhood may bring joyous memories for many, but for some it may also bring pain. As adults we it’s important to look back at our childhood to question how & why it shaped who we are & what we value. This is an important learning tool for self-realisation and learning from mistakes that our parents may have made. 

This narrative needs to change, from what we teach our kids, the values we instil in them, to what they are taught in schools about individual responsibility and taking ownership. Our culture, with all the great things it has to offer and teach is also stuck in the dark ages in some practices that may have been relevant historically but have little or no relevance in the new world. Men in India are spoilt beyond belief, first by their mothers who cocoon them to the extent that they are hardly made to help out in daily household chores or clean up after themselves and then by their wives and so on. Mothers in India are so over protective that in many cases men grow up with little sense of communal or household responsibility. Then they expect the same from their wives, cleaning up after them, making their bed, washing their clothes, serving them food, then picking up after them.

A whole generation has grown up without learning about accountability or ownership and you can see it in people you know and meet every day. For the rich kids it is lack of personal & financial accountability to their parents and to the society at large, growing up with the false sense that somehow their parent’s success and accomplishments have been transferred to them simply by the fact that they are someone’s children. For the poor it is the constant thought of being poor, reinforced by our society by constantly referring to them as helpless and poor, giving them handouts for free and eventually making them so used to living on hands outs that they start thinking that it is their birth right to receive them.

Others may be responsible for a situation that you may find yourself in, but you are the only one responsible to ensure that you don’t remain there, and that’s where taking accountability comes into play. I concede that there are those who are desperate and require the help of society at large to uplift them out of extreme poverty, but beyond a point it becomes the responsibility of the individual to pull themselves out of a given situation by not focusing on what resources that they don’t have, but by being resourceful and using the resources that they do have. Kids growing up poor have a hard time, as they are not exposed to a variety of things, most critical of those being proper education, nutrition & healthcare. Some of them overcome this great disadvantage that life has thrown at them to be successful beyond belief, but most are caught up in the mindset of being poor or in making quick money by cutting corners. Then there is the great Indian middle class, sandwiched between the two, confused about whether they are rich or poor, Canadian, British, American or Indian. 

Coming from a middle-class upbringing myself, my father was fighter pilot in the Indian Airforce, my mother a school teacher. I grew up with a sense of having, yet lacking but always aspiring for more. There were some values instilled by my father (being a military man) that stay embedded in me. Folding your clothes & putting them away, making your own bed, polishing your shoes, taking your plate to the kitchen, emptying it out in the bin & rinsing it, cleaning your own car (occasionally) etc. I watched my father perform these tasks daily & I see him perform them daily till date. In today’s day an age, it becomes very easy for to rely on help. When kids at home see maids making their bed, people picking up after them, food being wasted, waste not being segregated, the garbage collector or house help being treated poorly, women in the house being treated a certain way, prioritising money over quality family time etc, it all has an impact on how children think & what they take accountability for. A lot of insecurities, habits, values can be traced back to our childhood, our social interaction with our parents and peers. 

What I derived looking at this confused state of mine while growing up and throughout high school was feeling of always comparing what I had to what my friends or neighbours had. I guess the biggest flaw in the middle-class way of thinking (if there is such a thing) is that of not appreciating what one has and to continually look at two opposite spectrums of society thinking we are better than one but worse off than the other. 

In all cases mentioned above what is the common thread? Mindset. Challenges faced by us as individuals, collectively as a society and as a nation can only be overcome if we start changing ourselves through behavioural interventions that force us to stop, think, evaluate and then act based on our learnings, experiences and beliefs, which are directly co-related to the early stages of our childhood and then reinforced throughout our lives either through positive reaffirmation which also include inaction in the form of ignoring an act or habit. 

This must be a continuous process, starting from how and what we teach our kids at home, what and how our educational institutes teach in school and colleges and finally how and what we are rewarded for at work. 

Early childhood education is not about making your child book smart, but it’s more about teaching them to take accountability for small things so that as adults they may take accountability to take on & overcome bigger problems. 

Manik Thapar (Founder & CEO)

Eco Wise Waste Management Pvt Ltd