A mission far from cleanliness

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.