The Truth about Garbage
It happened on a train journey to the south, when one of my fellow passengers, an Australian teacher on a visit to India, was searching for a dustbin to throw away a biscuit wrapper, in a small obscure railway station where the train had halted. His perseverance was to be commended as he did find one before the train started moving while all around him he could see Indians spitting, throwing banana peels and waste on to the tracks. People on the train and elsewhere could be seen watching him in amusement and would have thought him mad true to their conduct in public.

It happened yet again on a little known beach in Maharashtra, where strolling on the sands one evening, I came across a Swede who started talking about the garbage piled up on one of the pathways to the beach. Not only garbage but a channel was created for dirty water to flow and accumlulate. He enquired surprisingly of me as to how people could do this so near a beach and why nothing was done about it. In his country, Sweden, they turned garbage into manure, electricity, he explained matter-of-factly. My response was to mutter something unintelligibly, hang my head in shame and try to change the topic.

Coincidence as it may seem that both the incidents involved foreigners who had come to this country on pleasure trips, it was a bitter reminder of the civic state of our country, or rather to put it correctly, the civic state we the citizens have brought this country to. These two incidents surely left an indelible scar on my civic conscience and I found myself staring at an India which on one side was aspiring to be in the top league of powerful nations because of its software skills, space science achievements, cheap and intelligent human resource etc while on the other side did not know or did not bother to manage and dispose of its waste.

For a culture in which people consider an early morning bath as almost a ritual and therefore cleanliness as next to Godliness, it is unfortunate to see the garbage mess we have put our country in. Every other empty space and street corner worth having, provides the eye with an assortment of waste: industrial, human, construction etc. You either turn a blind eye or run past it, and when matters get worse join the chorus shouting from rooftops against the municipality who are only partly to blame. Not a moment is spent on self introspection as to what part the citizenry plays in the accumulation or non accumulation of garbage. Holding someone responsible for the production of garbage might be a bit stiff, but surely people should be taken to task if they do not responsibly ensure the disposal of the same in a clean, environment friendly and efficient manner. An unscrupulous industrialist cutting corners by not installing effluent treatment plant on his site and getting away with it by greasing the palms of equally dishonest pollution control board inspectors, an indifferent and callous housewife for whom her space is heaven, another’s a garbage dump, a builder out to make quick bucks on his construction site with total disregard about the disposal of construction waste he has left behind, motorists who never look back at the havoc their exhaust pipes unleashes on others behind, are sadly all part of the problem but hopefully are also part of the solution. What is bad for you is also bad for your neighbour and environment, needs to be learnt fast. I beg asking people who are fond of comparing India to China and Singapore and showing it in bad light, why they never venture to compare their sense of civic duty and responsibility with that of foreigners.

Is cultivating a civic sense and practicing it only part of a child’s school curriculum in Civics and not part of our daily lives.