Cleanliness: An Indian view

Ever wondered why European and American Countries are cleaner/tidier/neater than India? Is it because cleanliness is groomed to them from the childhood and its it their blood or they use simple common sense? We(Indians) tend to learn every thing from foreign countries, but eventually missed out the most obvious and essential stuffs like sanitation and cleanliness.

Last Friday i was traveling back home from my office. It was late and traffic was unusually high at 10pm. Was patiently waiting for the traffic to clear near Vadapalani signal. I was near a tempo van. Whatever idea ran into the tempo driver is still opaque..he opened the door, and started spitting on the road. As i was near him, my foot was also not spared! I gave him a wtf-look and he gave me a i-am-an-ass-look and asked apologies. Probably he mistook my leg looked to a wash-basin ;).

Even though his intention was not to spit on me, he didn't even realize he should not spit on the road. Like vivek says, its very true that, "In our country we should not kiss in public, but can piss anywhere!".

While driving back home, with a stinking leg, was questioning myself why the Indians don't prefer a cleaner way of living and why most of the places in India is dirty and filthy...the first thing came to my mind was the illiterate and economically unlucky lots.

Most of them either open up biriyani/food stalls and wash the plates and throw the waste in the streets or encroach the platform. Couple of years back, when i was traveling in a PTC bus, i had a brawl with a passenger who was coolly smoking his beedi. I did not want to complain to the conductor like a baby, so i handled him myself....though he did not stop smoking afterwards:). I could realize now that cleanliness and sanitation is not brooded with us.

Thinking deeper, its not only illiterate people who turn streets in to garbage pits, every single citizen plays some part or the other. We drink tea from tea shop and throw the cups in the street corners, buy things and throw the trash/plastics on the road, take our pets out for a walk and make them use the road as their toilets, cleaning vehicles on the road, use the road as garage to store things while constructing a house etc.

Government does their part by not providing enough public toilets, not cleaning and maintaining the roads properly, not enforcing proper/stricter sanitation rules, allowing buses with pathetic condition to pollute and ruin the roads, allowing garbage trucks to be driven with a open top(so that they can spread garbage), unmaintained drainages, uncleared slums etc.

As a result of these, we get dustier, bumpier and dirtier roads. I am really not sure whether this condition will ever change. We are really getting degraded each year. Few years back, i still remember chennai with somewhat cleaner roads. Today, one can not stand or drive near a bus, because someone will spit on you certainly. We will keep wondering(for years) how foreign countries are spic and span, while not knowing that its in the hands of we people!