A mission far from
cleanliness
By Manohar Manoj, Editor, Economy India
1. Only cleaning the Delhi will not help the national cause of
cleanliness. In around 4000 towns of country, there is not even one-time
brooming in a year. Making wages of safai workers linked with their
productivity and applying more and more technology will help this cause
2 most important thing is to ensure a complete system for the
disposal, dumping and treatment facilities of the daily collected all kinds of garbage
and ruins. Second the adequate connectivity of sewer with the resident colonies
and its regular clearing. It require huge fund and planning
3. Urban India requires at least 10 lakh toilets and around 25 lakhs urinals
and rural India needs around 5 crore latrines to meet out the hygienic need of
the country.
In public life, there would be no better
campaigns than eradication of corruption and dirtiness. However, merely
bringing some politicians and officers under the judicial trials or under the
ambit of investigating authorities will not help the great cause of corruption
removal in the country. In the same way, in the name of cleanliness drive
holding broom by our politicians will only create posturing of it, not bring
the final outcome of these campaigns.
Nothing
to say whether it is cleanliness drive or corruption removal, it has so many
loopholes in its existing schemes and policies, lacking adequate funds, absence
of better work plan and innumerable barricades before them put the success of
these campaigns under the big question mark. The fact is that without solving
these all factors, it is impossible to fulfill this mission.
Albeit
we are here not talking here corruption, rather we are discussing clean India
campaign which has been taken in mission mode by NaMo led NDA Govt. Taking
cleanliness drive in a mission mode is undoubtedly highly appreciable
initiative. But, two months have been spent since the day this campaign was
launched, what we have witnessed during this period, only there has been posturing
of holding broom by some politicians or some celebrities followed by its
publicity in the newspapers. Nothing-concrete any things get happened on this
front. Only on the day of launching this program on 2nd October, we observed
some extra cleanliness inside some govt. premises and roads in some metro and
state capital cities of the country. Nothing happened in around 4000
municipality towns of the country, where one can witness not even a single
brooming in a year also. The matter is that launching of any campaign can
create a public fervor and media headlines also, but ultimately we can fulfill
only through alerting our whole cleanliness structure spreading over every
corner of country in city corporations, municipal corporations, municipalities
etc.
When
we go into the details of this campaign, we find there are three focus areas,
which has to be addressed properly while chalking out nationwide strategy over
national cleanliness. Firstly, we look at the daily routine brooming of the
public places, which involves manual safai workers, and also application of
cleaning equipments and technologies. Second is the proper disposal, dumping
and treatments of entire collected garbage at proper locations and third is
ensuring the availabilities of adequate numbers of toilets and urinals and
fourth is proper planning and fund requirement for fulfilling all above-mentioned
points of cleanliness drive.
Talking
about the first point, we have to see that all urban local bodies attached to
different metros, cities, state capitals and municipality's towns of the
country,"Are they paying proper attention over their safai workers deployed for cleaning public
places, roads, footpaths, offices, commercial organizations in respective
areas. Are they doing their duty in sincere way? If they are doing, how is
their quality? What we see in central capital Delhi, which is comparatively
cleaner than other metropolitan cities of country, here politicians are making
more posturing of holding brooms. In state capitals particularly in non
capitals B grade cities, situation is
very bad. In the district level towns the situation is worse and last but not
the least in municipality town, the things are in extremely pathetic condition,
where one can witness not a single time brooming in even a year time. Even in
the economic capital of the country, Mumbai, public say Mumbai get cleaned only
in the rainy season. But in the municipality towns, the rainy season rather
plays havoc, where there is not culverts and since all roads are not pucca, water get
logged down and situation become extremely bad.
Talking
about safai workers it is very necessary to look after their wages and working
conditions. What we see, because of lesser working time, most of the government
organizations including railways have brought safai worker job under contract
basis. Very few depts, who employed safai workers on permanent basis, they
spent most of the time workless, whereas safai workers who are employed by
safai contractors or cleaning outsourcing companies, they are being exploited
by the contractors in terms of higher working hour and lesser amount of wages.
Govt. should immediately clear these anomalies and must announce a nationwide
wage policy for all safai workers whether working in government organization on
permanent basis or working in contract firms. the wages of safai workers must
be linked with their productivities and skill and they must be availed all kind
of social security's by their employers, that should be ensured so that all
soldiers of this mission must have high moral to deliver for this great cause.
If
we ensure this, all municipal authorities who either do not hire safai workers
or not monitor their hired workers, they will be forced to employ safai workers
and to make financial provision for this out of their revenue and grants. There
is another dimension of this matter, that is the application of cleaning
equipments as well as new technologies for this cause. The late prime minister
P V Narsimha Rao had banned the carrying of latrines over the heads by any
safai worker. In a way, this was the initiation of adopting cleaning technology
in any cleanliness drive. The fact of the matter is that still our safai
workers make their cleaning work in manual ways. They enter into the sewer
hole, they uses their naked hand while cleaning safety tanks.
Now,
since we already have launched a national campaign for the cleanliness, this is
high time when we should consider over applying more and more technologies for
all kind of cleanliness work. We must install as much as R &D centers for
this cause. If we ensure both things, to announce a national wage policy for
the safai workers as well as adopting more and more cleaning equipments with
new technologies; it will give a great boost to this noble cause of the
country.
The
second major aspect of this campaign is availing hefty network of sewer and
culverts in all four thousands municipality towns of the country. Not only that
there should be all alert mechanism of clearing it all the time. There must be
complete availability of garbage centers in all residential colonies, its
dumping and treatment. We need massive planning and huge amount of resources in
fulfilling this. The fact is that in city like Mumbai we do not have proper
water drainage system. There are many places, where we have sewer, but there is
no treatment plant. In most of the cities there is no garbage store, it is
being dumped anywhere in the cities.
So
when we talk about cleanliness mission, it is not merely holding brooms and
making posturing over that for getting one's photograph in the newspapers. The
fundamental question is whether our four thousand cities are well facilitated
with adequate number of garbage stores, good network of culverts and its
connectivity with the sewer and have treatment plants for that. For continuing
this process and meeting out the expenses over this, it is also very necessary
to make proper revenue model of this. Until unless we have reasonable amount of
funds meant for this cause, we cannot achieve this for proper availability of
funds it is equally necessary it must have good revenue model. There is nothing
harm in taking user charges for these kind of services. It will make the
mission sustainable and viable also. We see, in many cities electricity
generation are being done out of the ruins of the garbage and it is being used
in enlightening the street light. We must expand these kinds of things
throughout the country, so that we have more and more hygienic environment.
For fulfilling these goals, we must think
govt. to make alliance with the NGOs and
private players. We know during 1980-decade, organisations like SULABH
contributed a lot in availing toilet facilities throughout the country. In a
way it brought a kind of social revolution in the country. There is nothing
wrong in making these kinds of organizations as partners for govt. of India
move. Ultimately, we need an institutional structure also in order to fulfill
this kind of gigantic mission,
Third important aspect of this mission is
related with the mass construction of toilets in both urban and rural areas.
Almost 60 percent of rural population and 20 percent of urban population do not
have access to toilets; they go the open areas for their latrine need. Earlier
in Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan advertising campaigns, it was repeatedly communicated
to the people about the need of toilet , particularly for the women.. This kind
of advtg. Campaign have compelled those
affluent rural families, who had no
toilets and and were ready to have it. Still almost 40 percent of rural
households have no resources to construct toilets. Though rural development
ministry provide subsidy of around 10-11 thousand rupee for constructing
toilets, which is not adequate enough to construct toilet out of this fund. On
this basis too, govt. require around 50 thousand crore to construct 5 crore
toilets in the rural areas. So it is very imperative task to go for low cost
toilets in the country. There must be
more R &D work over this so that more and more cheaper toilet can be
constructed in the country. We also need proper revenue model for this, we can
also think over cleanliness cess on line of education and health cess being
operational in the country since 2009.
The present Mode government has planned to
invest around 1.2 lakh crores over the various aspects of clean India campaign
during next 5 years uptill 2019. Now it would be interesting to watch how this
government implement various objectives of this mission and how it faces the
structural corruption while execution of these schemes. It is also notable here
this subject is primarily the subject of third tier of democracy, the local
self governing bodies. They solely depend over their respective state
governments and union government for their financial need.
so ultimately picking broom is not going to
help this mission, it require to involve all factors like finance, technology
and human resource planning in order to achieve this great goal of clean India.