Founder, Isha Foundation
HISTORICALLY, WE AS a culture have always invested heavily in both personal and public hygiene. Even today, we stand out as a nation in terms of personal hygiene. Most women will not enter their kitchen without a morning bath. No one enters a temple without a shower. No yogic practice is performed without cleansing the body first.
Taking care of the internal and external cleanliness of the body is a habit that has stayed with us. However, the awareness that we need to keep our public places clean has taken a beating. This has happened because Bharat, under the expert care of colonial guile, decimated itself from being the greatest economy on the planet 25 decades ago. Industries were destroyed. Taxation was back-breaking. This slowly took us to a place where no one had the means, energy or resources to maintain public hygiene.
Unfortunately, even after Independence, governments have not taken enough care to organize cleanliness in the public space. This is not a complaint. Maybe we have had other things to do. Maybe people thought this was not important enough. But today, we know that lack of public hygiene is costing the nation dearly.
Malnourishment and lack of public hygiene generally complement each other. Repeated bouts of bacterial and parasitical infection in the digestive tract take away the ability to absorb nutrients. This is happening to so many children in the country. Considering all this, making India clean is a very important project. I am glad that for the first time, the Prime Minister of the country has taken this up.
When the Prime Minister launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) on Gandhi Jayanti in 2014, a certain section of society was making comments: ‘Why is the Prime Minister talking about pedestrian issues when there are larger issues to be addressed?’
These people do not realize that addressing such pedestrian issues is in our national interest. Without creating a clean nation, developing a nation into a great possibility will be out of question because the infections and other things we carry within us will not allow us to maximize our true potential.
The process of cleaning India is not an overnight job. At the same time, if we can inspire the entire citizenry, it would be quite an easy task. It has to be understood that in this country, nothing changes just by changing policies. It takes an emotional movement, which is what I believe the Prime Minister is trying to do.
Besides the individual’s role, today, there are many technologies evolving in the world to transform filth into wealth. There is no such thing as waste in this universe. It is just a question of whether we know how to use something or not. The time has come when we have to learn to transform everything and use it for our well-being. What was earth, we made into filth. We must at least be able to transform it back into earth.
There is substantial knowledge – both traditional and new – on how to do this. We must make the transforming of filth into wealth a part of our national ethos. Every city, municipality and village panchayat must take it up.
For example, a city like Mumbai generates 210 crore litres of sewage per day. Most of it goes to the sea. But if this is treated and used in micro-irrigation, it can water thousands of hectares of agriculture. If you add up sewage from 200 Indian cities and towns, it comes to 3600 crore litres which can micro-irrigate 30 lakh to 90 lakh hectares. Whether it is river pollution, plastic waste or something else, if you show people that what they think is filth can become wealth, you will not find any filth anywhere.
SBM is not just the Prime Minister’s movement. It is a crucial step for India to move ahead and truly prosper. Our jawans are standing at our borders, risking their lives every day. Our farmers toil away to feed the nation. Our industrial workers are sweating it out to give us a foothold in the world. One simple way through which we can show our love for our country is by creating a Swachh Bharat.
I’m sure if all of us are determined, we can turn this into a clean nation in twelve months’ time. A year is enough to clean up the nation. Let us make this commitment that before Gandhi Jayanti in 2019, we will create a clean India on every level – on the streets, at home, in terms of rooting out corruption, and in our own minds and hearts.
Remember, this is a culture that built consciousness of cleanliness through public drainage systems before any other.
Let us make it happen.