Since childhood most people from the middle and upper classes grow up witnessing frenzy in homes as mothers and sisters begin the cleaning act every year when Diwali (or Deepawali) draws near. It is not that people live through the year in squalor and perk up just days before the so-called festival of lights. But at this time cleaning became a sort of jihad — a word appropriately defining the spirit of this drive though having a completely different connotation now — and women in houses virtually peer with a magnifying glass to spot specks of dust and cobwebs that may be hanging in untouched nooks and corners. Domestic maids, professional cleaners and painters are supervised to ensure that the job is well done.
Most from the middle classes give scant thought to people who work to provide them with their coat of annual enamel because it is a job they are committed to do. Even though these people beautify their shanties with whatever resources are at their command, little is done to clean the surroundings of their dwellings. After all, they are not paid to clean the areas around railway tracks or other forsaken places where slums come up. As a result, these cleaners of middle class India just manage to insulate their small private spaces from the filth strewn around.
Earlier this week, I was queried by a French radio journalist who wanted to know if the house where Prime Minister Narendra Modi grew up had a toilet. The fellow scribe obviously wanted to check if its absence or limited presence had been the inspiration behind the flamboyant Swachch Bharat Abhiyan just the way Mr Modi told me that life without electricity during childhood had been the driving memory behind his aggressive pursuit of 24x7 electricity for rural homes in Gujarat.
For the record, this matter never came up in conversations with Mr Modi nor can I recollect any speech or interview where he said anything linking childhood experiences with clean India campaign. Yet I am sure, the aggressive campaign has roots in poor sanitation facilities in Vadnagar. As a child, Mr Modi acted in Piloo Phool, a play on the theme of untouchability. Sadly the exposure to this theme as a child is in vain because the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan makes no mention of the need to simultaneously elevate the lives of people professionally engaged in the task of waste management.
The current high-voltage campaign, launched with the assistance of celebrities, has a narrow focus and skims the surface of urban garbage by emphasising on removing it from public glare to a place where a veil can be put for it to accumulate. There are professionals who would have taken away the garbage after it was assembled by either Mr Modi or any of his celebrity endorsers? There is no mention of either their presence or the need to make them partners in the campaign because India’s cleaners are linked to their jobs by their caste. Unless it is made clear what the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan means for them, scepticism would remain that this is another sarkari scheme with all its hoopla. In its absence, the scheme remains an upper-caste initiative to cleanse their immediate environs and ignore the rest.
Swachhata — or cleanliness — has to be not just an idea but an ingrained value. The problem lies in the sentiment of a majority of Indians that cleaning is impure, unhealthy and against religious belief. Most Hindu men grow up believing that dish washing in the absence of domestic assistance is the responsibility of their mothers, sisters and wives. Hindus generally consider Muslims as dirty and over time this has become one of the factors behind perpetuation of social prejudice. Most people of my generation would recall the dread during childhood when vacations often also meant visits to relatives’ houses. Toilets would invariably be at remote locations and one had to shed clothes before wearing a wrap-around for the “visit”. After the “dirty job” was done, the gamcha had to be washed before wrapping it again. At the door, a cousin, aunt or uncle would be summoned to hand over a dry towel and entry to the house would be allowed only after an intricate public exchange of these garments.
Such extreme practices have mostly ceased in urban or semi-urban India as toilets have entered homes. Yet defecation is still considered an impure act and many bathe immediately thereafter. With such an attitude can they be expected to clean their toilets? Swachch Bharat can become a reality only when it goes beyond symbolic sweeping of streets by leaders, tycoons and celebrities.
In August President Pranab Mukherjee announced that the government would launch a Swachch Bharat Mission when addressing the two Houses of Parliament. Two months later, the ministry of drinking water and sanitation circulated a note among states informing that the Centre had decided to synchronise previous government schemes like Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) and National Rural Drinking Water Programme. The states were also intimated that NBA aim for 100 per cent sanitation in rural areas was being advanced from 2022 to 2019. Several goals were set as part of the campaign. This included changing the mindset of people who were “habituated to open defecation”.
Such goals are essential but it must be accompanied by social reform and breakdown of social stereotypes. It would be worthwhile if the government concurrently mounts a public awareness campaign against caste and religious divide. Mr Modi appears greatly inspired by Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew and the cleanliness drive he initiated. But for a country of India’s vastness and for Swachch Bharat Abhiyan to be a success, it must incorporate housing programmes for urban poor and make the professions of cleaners or safai karamcharis, truly respectable. For the campaign to be socially inclusive they must also command social respect and unsoiled homes.
The writer is the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times
