Swachh Bharat : The challenge is to emulate Porbandar!

The great Mahatma Gandhi made a radical statement once when he said, ‘Sanitation is more important than independence’. While overall sanitation facilities have improved in South Asia, they still lag behind the world and particularly the developed world. So at first glance you may be led to believe that cleanliness is directly proportional to economic development. And while India’s charts on mobile penetration, penetration of TV sets and internet access keeps hitting the roof, most of the charts for sanitation are still disappointing. According to the Census of India, 49.8% of the households in India don't have access to a latrine and they use open spaces. But then that was before the start of the Swachh Bharat program.

Prime Minister Modi himself showing the way for Swachh Bharat

Our Prime Minister is right in taking up the challenging cause of Swachh Bharat and personally pursuing it with vigour.  Prime Minister Modi said that over 24.8 million toilets had been built in the rural areas in the last 2 years, adding that 15 million more toilets will be constructed in 2017. Building toilets in rural India is one of the prime objectives of Prime Minister Modi`s `Swachh Bharat Mission`. Its main aim is to make India "open defecation-free" by October 2019 by constructing 120 million toilets in rural India. Over 10.9 million toilets were built across the country in the first 11 months of 2015-16.

Gujarat's three districts Porbandar, Narmada and Mehsana were declared open defecation free ( ODF ) on Gandhi Jayanti ( October 2 ) this year. Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani said that his government was working towards making Gujarat the first ODF state in the country.

Porbandar Chowpatty

When Porbandar became open defecation free ( ODF ) it did two things :

1. It posed a challenge to the rest of the country. After all does the rest of the country want to be far behind Porbandar?

2. It possibly broke down a lot of existing theories on how to make the country open defecation free.

And if one looks at Porbandar there is nothing outstanding or differentiating about it from many other districts in the country. It has a literacy level of 75.8%, the urban population is roughly half the total population, and Gujarat as a state is 10th in the ranking of states for per capita income. So there is nothing exceptional or special in Porbandar that could have made it ODF.

But then is cleanliness a function of literacy, education or even income? Porbandar proves it is not a function of any of these parameters. Its a matter of political will and the individual will of society to have clean surroundings.

 When one looks at the people in India who have the best levels of literacy, education and income, one tends to come back disappointed. 

A walk through an urban mall, an up market office complex, or airport keep showing up the public cleanliness standards in India in general.

 This picture for example was taken in an upmarket office complex in Mumbai that houses some of India’s best and most well known corporations.

 An urban office complex in Central Mumbai

 Somehow it shows a lack of civic consciousness and dis-regard of public cleanliness in general.

So while the educated professionals from high income classes may have a high standard of personal cleanliness and hygiene they seem to certainly lack a sense of cleanliness in public.

MK Gandhi once said ‘Everyone must be his own scavenger’. It is this quality perhaps that we seem to lack the most and which the Japanese for example have developed into a fine art. On Saturday, June 14, 2014, you will remember the Japanese shocked the world when Japanese spectators voluntarily cleaned up an entire stadium, that too after their team lost in a World Cup soccer match against Argentina.

Prescription for a cleaner India

A facade of the palace in Mysore - the cleanest city in India

Like all other habits that need to be intercepted, India needs:

? Increased awareness of the problem

? Shaming of offenders (some villages used the whistle as a device to shame offenders who were defecating in the open)

• A Swachh Bharat ambassador in every town and village who pushes the concept through

(One such success is Gheneda in Ajmer district of Rajasthan which became open defecation free by October 2, 2015. Madan Nath Kalbelia was the champion ambassador of the village. Kalbelia is a folk dancer who entertains tourists for a living. He was the first in his village to build a toilet in his house in April 2015. So determined was he that he pledged in a land where a man’s moustache is his honour to lose half his moustache, if he was not successful in making the village open-defecation free.

Another equally commendable case in 2015 was the work of Rashida Khan in Kesla Village in Rajnandgaon, Chattisgarh who extended her Roza by a week so that she could celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr only after her village was open-defecation free. So while the rest of the country celebrated Id on 18 July they waited for a week to hear from their zonal office that their village was open-defecation free. The interesting part is that only 8 of the 120 families in the village were Muslims)

? Rewarding success. ( National Recognition like what Porbandar got might be adequate. After all being open defecation free is a matter of pride for Porbandar's society )

And all this has to happen while additional toilets and infrastructure is being built simultaneously.

Cleanliness is a mindset. It is an attitude. To disrupt the current attitude of cleanliness and hygiene in India is indeed a challenge, since it is a habit that has gone uncorrected for decades. The Swaach Bharat Ranking of capital cities is adequate proof that cleanliness is not a function of economic development but rather a mental attitude. And that attitude needs to change if India has to keep up with the rest of the world, and if Indians really need to feel proud of themselves in the global context. Being proud of India for becoming the largest market for smart phones pales in comparison!

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