The Indian Littering Syndrome
As we celebrate 154th Gandhi Jayanti, the biggest lesson besides non-violence that the father of the nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who is regarded as “Mahatma”, was the importance of cleanliness. Yet we, as a nation struggle to work on this ideal of his.
The Problem
As I was opening my office door, my eyes fell on something very gross just besides the door. It was our office bin, which we keep outside for the housekeeping to collect trash from. The bin was entirely covered with spits of chewing tobacco and lot of stuff thrown carelessly around the bin. This is when I knew what would be the topic of this weeks article.
This issue of littering is way deep than you think. The root of this problem is the Indian attitude of “If its not mine, why should I care?”. This is someone else’s office, why should I care to keep it clean? This is not my road, why should I care to keep it clean? And when you scale it up to 1.5 billion population, you get a population who doesn’t care about the national infrastructure and resources, and yet they dare to say that the infrastructure is not up to the mark.
Now, I have been fortunate enough to visit a lot of foreign countries, but, when I see the same Indians outside India, this attitude completely vanishes. The same unruly person is now law abiding. They don’t litter, follow all the traffic regulations, maintain the queue and maintain the decorum. If we do the same thing when we are in our own nation, not only will it save billions of dollars worth of infrastructure, but will also improve the overall health of everyone as well. As we are a country with a huge population, it is very difficult for the administrators to serve this large audience. That leaves only one option, self-discipline. Until the time, we as a nation, don’t learn self-discipline, the progress which the government and the public administrators make will be nullified. Here, I would like to mention the government’s effort to improve the cleanliness, as it is actively involved in making and implementing policies and events like “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” (Clean India Campaign) and how it has made it competitive.
The other part of the problem is related to chewing tobacco. Here are some statistics on it: In a research conducted in 2019 by researchers from University of California, it was found that were are about 200 Million chewing tobacco users in India which was 2/3rd of the global users. The current market size of Smokeless tobacco is expected to be about $20b or ₹1.6L Cr. Now due to this enormous market size the revenue coming to government in form of taxes is also huge and so, it would be difficult for the government to put a complete stop to the market. But again, the amount of diseases (primarily Cancer and Tuberculosis), destruction caused to the public infrastructure is far worse. However I would reiterate that the onus is on the people to stop the use of tobacco. Here is some very informative content from Abhi and Niyu on their Youtube channel:
As we approach the 100 years of our independence, it is important for us as the citizens of this country to take the ownership of the country, otherwise the sacrifice of all the freedom fighters would go in vain.
What can you do?
There are several things you can do. If you are a citizen who is living in the country, the next time you think of throwing trash randomly, recall this article find a bin and dispose trash properly. If you are a consumer of any kind of tobacco, read the warning carefully, think of what harm it can do, not only to you but also to your loved ones. If you are an overseas citizen or if you know someone from India as 1 out of every four person in the world is an Indian, send them this article, India has the potential and is on its way to become the factory for the world, so if it affects India it will affect the world.
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