When the Prime Minister (PM) of India recently announced an ambitious and aspirational initiative to `clean up India', he would not have bargained for the spectrum of responses from different segments of the country. All the well-intentioned PM meant to do was to give an impetus to half-hearted, still-born and non-existent efforts to significantly improve cleanliness in homes and in public places and urge Indians to collectively work towards that goal. But, this scribe hears that various constituencies interpreted the over-arching goal as well as the process differently to suit their own agendas and convenience. Here goes.
As usual the politicos get the prime spot. It is rumoured that the beyond-the-pale-corrupt and the fence-sitting corrupt amongst politicians (this author is willing to yield to those `chaste' politicians, who ruefully point out that there is a minority amongst them who do not dip their private pens in the public ink-pots) decided to see a metaphor in the PM's appeal where none existed and interpreted `clean-up' very conveniently to mean `take the country and public funds to the cleaners'! Consequently it appears many of the `proven pundits' already enjoying their jail terms in suitably luxurious settings, are hoping for immediate release so that they can offer their expertise as management consultants (phew, I can visualize their Linked-In profiles!) and help in expeditious swindling generally. Their minions outside are sharpening the tools of their trade for the leaders to emerge from incarceration and start harvesting.
Immediately after the PM's announcement, there were unbridled celebrations in various parts of the country, obviously on public roads, sponsored by political parties wanting to jump early on to the bandwagon. In the aftermath, mounds of litter (remnants of fire crackers, rotting flowers and garlands, water bottles, empty boxes which had housed sweets earlier, stones and glass bottles meant for acts of defence and offence in emergencies, broken parts of pubic buses which came in the way, other assortment of removable and destroyable public property etc - all that paraphernalia going with a successful public rally in India) have apparently been left behind. With an assortment of political leaders blithely telling their fervent followers that the PM's team of 9x9x9......(he nominated 9 people, who would do the same and so on) will do the clean-up after them. Last heard, the civic administrations in various towns and cities have just barely made way on the roads for the senior politicians to move around, leaving the others to climb over mounds of waste in their untiring efforts to reach their destination.
Senior spokespersons for the national party which recently lost the election but had ruled the country for many decades, leaving the country's affairs in an unholy and filthy mess (self-preservation dictates that this author does not get adventurously more explicit and leaves the identity of the party to be guessed by the supremely intelligent and perceptive readers of these blog posts) who had gone into hibernation, promptly made their presence felt on all TV channels. They appeared in one of the 24 to 30 (they were difficult to count due to their very small size, could have been more) postage-stamp sized boxes on the TV screen and swore that they were who they said they were (there was no way for the viewer to establish their identities otherwise, due to the tiny images which made faces unintelligible). Their well-rehearsed statement was delivered in bored monotones: `Our party takes pride in saying we had originally launched a similar initiative 52 years ago, which was sabotaged and run into the ground (that explains the permanent littering of the country) by the Opposition parties. So, this PM cannot take credit for this, no way'.
All secular parties in the country (that is basically all except the one, well, may be three including a couple of allies) have been vociferously unified in their demand that the other minority communities should not be deprived of the exhilaration of freely littering public places at the same per capita rate as was done during Deepavali. Since this rate has not been established, they wanted an all-party parliamentary committee to arrive at this all-important number. Translated, that means until one round of such littering is completed by each minority community during their own festivals, they - the secular parties - would not brook any sustained attempt to clean public places, come what may! Such parties are contemplating diktats to ardent followers to stop trains, block national highways and do multiple rallies which would generate tonnes of garbage, just to drive home the point while showing their might.
Tamil Nadu politicians have come out strongly against any clean-up anywhere prior to the Sri Lankan government and their President are removed from power by India. They are shy to confess they have no clue as to how this can be achieved but insist, nevertheless. In their mind, this action is an essential prerequisite to any attempt to clean Tamil Nadu, if not India. Mamta Banerjee has gone mum on this issue, ostensibly because she has enough to clean up in West Bengal and knows she will be tied up in her own cleaning activities for the foreseeable future and cannot talk or think about any other mess.
As far as citizens are concerned, those who have always cleaned up and maintained cleanliness are continuing to do that. Others, who have lived in the midst of all the filth right outside their homes and other public places, thanks to their own and civic bodies' indifference, are waiting for Sharukh Khan or Priyanka Chopra or Tendulkar or Kamala Haasan or at least Ambani or Tharoor to show up with the magical broom, so that they can have a photo-op if not a selfie with one of them! Civic bodies are now putting an innovative spin on their proven and inherent inability to clean up by telling people that if things get tidied up now, none of the above-mentioned individuals will show up and the loss will be the people's!! The latter can see the reasonableness of that argument and are sitting pretty on piles of litter, awaiting the dignitary to materialize!
At the lowest level of the chain, while our home and the environs remain reasonably clean, my dear wife is visibly upset by one prickly garbage dump, which lies on a path we frequent. It began on the side of a narrow road but has displayed expansionist tendencies to go viral and occupy half the road. It is just outside some apartment blocks and a host of shops and restaurants, but inexplicably people living there do not seem to mind being the principal beneficiaries of this visual and olfactory treat. Every single time we pass this dump, my wife wants to jump out and clean it up, even without the involvement of the creators or abettors of that dump. And she wants this author to help, forgetting that I am not Kamala Haasan or Tendulkar!! So far, my retort - `what makes you so sure that you will shame those people into changing their ways?' has kept both of us away from that filthy dump, but God knows for how long!!
As usual the politicos get the prime spot. It is rumoured that the beyond-the-pale-corrupt and the fence-sitting corrupt amongst politicians (this author is willing to yield to those `chaste' politicians, who ruefully point out that there is a minority amongst them who do not dip their private pens in the public ink-pots) decided to see a metaphor in the PM's appeal where none existed and interpreted `clean-up' very conveniently to mean `take the country and public funds to the cleaners'! Consequently it appears many of the `proven pundits' already enjoying their jail terms in suitably luxurious settings, are hoping for immediate release so that they can offer their expertise as management consultants (phew, I can visualize their Linked-In profiles!) and help in expeditious swindling generally. Their minions outside are sharpening the tools of their trade for the leaders to emerge from incarceration and start harvesting.
Immediately after the PM's announcement, there were unbridled celebrations in various parts of the country, obviously on public roads, sponsored by political parties wanting to jump early on to the bandwagon. In the aftermath, mounds of litter (remnants of fire crackers, rotting flowers and garlands, water bottles, empty boxes which had housed sweets earlier, stones and glass bottles meant for acts of defence and offence in emergencies, broken parts of pubic buses which came in the way, other assortment of removable and destroyable public property etc - all that paraphernalia going with a successful public rally in India) have apparently been left behind. With an assortment of political leaders blithely telling their fervent followers that the PM's team of 9x9x9......(he nominated 9 people, who would do the same and so on) will do the clean-up after them. Last heard, the civic administrations in various towns and cities have just barely made way on the roads for the senior politicians to move around, leaving the others to climb over mounds of waste in their untiring efforts to reach their destination.
Senior spokespersons for the national party which recently lost the election but had ruled the country for many decades, leaving the country's affairs in an unholy and filthy mess (self-preservation dictates that this author does not get adventurously more explicit and leaves the identity of the party to be guessed by the supremely intelligent and perceptive readers of these blog posts) who had gone into hibernation, promptly made their presence felt on all TV channels. They appeared in one of the 24 to 30 (they were difficult to count due to their very small size, could have been more) postage-stamp sized boxes on the TV screen and swore that they were who they said they were (there was no way for the viewer to establish their identities otherwise, due to the tiny images which made faces unintelligible). Their well-rehearsed statement was delivered in bored monotones: `Our party takes pride in saying we had originally launched a similar initiative 52 years ago, which was sabotaged and run into the ground (that explains the permanent littering of the country) by the Opposition parties. So, this PM cannot take credit for this, no way'.
All secular parties in the country (that is basically all except the one, well, may be three including a couple of allies) have been vociferously unified in their demand that the other minority communities should not be deprived of the exhilaration of freely littering public places at the same per capita rate as was done during Deepavali. Since this rate has not been established, they wanted an all-party parliamentary committee to arrive at this all-important number. Translated, that means until one round of such littering is completed by each minority community during their own festivals, they - the secular parties - would not brook any sustained attempt to clean public places, come what may! Such parties are contemplating diktats to ardent followers to stop trains, block national highways and do multiple rallies which would generate tonnes of garbage, just to drive home the point while showing their might.
Tamil Nadu politicians have come out strongly against any clean-up anywhere prior to the Sri Lankan government and their President are removed from power by India. They are shy to confess they have no clue as to how this can be achieved but insist, nevertheless. In their mind, this action is an essential prerequisite to any attempt to clean Tamil Nadu, if not India. Mamta Banerjee has gone mum on this issue, ostensibly because she has enough to clean up in West Bengal and knows she will be tied up in her own cleaning activities for the foreseeable future and cannot talk or think about any other mess.
As far as citizens are concerned, those who have always cleaned up and maintained cleanliness are continuing to do that. Others, who have lived in the midst of all the filth right outside their homes and other public places, thanks to their own and civic bodies' indifference, are waiting for Sharukh Khan or Priyanka Chopra or Tendulkar or Kamala Haasan or at least Ambani or Tharoor to show up with the magical broom, so that they can have a photo-op if not a selfie with one of them! Civic bodies are now putting an innovative spin on their proven and inherent inability to clean up by telling people that if things get tidied up now, none of the above-mentioned individuals will show up and the loss will be the people's!! The latter can see the reasonableness of that argument and are sitting pretty on piles of litter, awaiting the dignitary to materialize!
At the lowest level of the chain, while our home and the environs remain reasonably clean, my dear wife is visibly upset by one prickly garbage dump, which lies on a path we frequent. It began on the side of a narrow road but has displayed expansionist tendencies to go viral and occupy half the road. It is just outside some apartment blocks and a host of shops and restaurants, but inexplicably people living there do not seem to mind being the principal beneficiaries of this visual and olfactory treat. Every single time we pass this dump, my wife wants to jump out and clean it up, even without the involvement of the creators or abettors of that dump. And she wants this author to help, forgetting that I am not Kamala Haasan or Tendulkar!! So far, my retort - `what makes you so sure that you will shame those people into changing their ways?' has kept both of us away from that filthy dump, but God knows for how long!!
