In his maiden address to the nation made on 15th August, the Independence Day, from the ramparts of historic Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that his Government would launch the Swachh Bharat or Clean India movement as people’s movement to keep their homes, localities, villages and cities clean. Keeping his promise, the mission began on October 2 to coincide with the birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation. Perhaps no better occasion could be imagined to initiate the mission in the entire country by way of homage to the leader. Gandhi ji had pledged to liberate India from foreign rule and he did fulfil it. But he did not survive to see Clean India movement launched. The Prime Minister said that launching the mission was to fulfil the desire of the Father of the Nation.
Ours is not the only country to undertake a mission of this kind. Almost all developed countries world over have, at one or the other time, embarked on cleanliness programme and followed it regularly till keeping environment clean and pure became part of the life of people. Even in a small country like Singapore, the level of cleanliness is high from international standards. Eighty per cent of our total population lives in villages numbering around 6 lakh. Therefore the success of Clean India movement depends on to what extent villages and rural areas of India are kept clean. This is a stupendous mission and a prolonged one first because enormous rural and urban areas of India have to be cleaned and secondly the centuries-old bad habits of the people to throw litter around have to be changed not through use of force but to prepare their minds to understand and follow the axiom that cleanliness is godliness.
Today India is not a clean country. Its cities, towns and villages are not clean at all. There is enormous pollution and there is serious danger of ecological imbalance if environs are not kept clean. It is true that by and large people keep their homes clean but that is not enough. They must also care to keep their localities, towns and villages clean. The sense of cleanliness must embrace the nation and not remain confined to private homes only. This slogan of Clean India is not to be taken as a hollow slogan. The Government has pondered over the mission and taken all aspects into consideration. A hefty amount of 60,000 crore rupees are to be allocated to the mission and each panchayat will get 20 lakh rupees a year for implementing the Clean India mission in letter and in spirit. It is unjust on the part of the people to expect results of the mission to accrue within a short period of time. It is an extended programme and the ultimate destination is that keeping environs clean should trickle down to the lowest rungs of society and it should become part of the life and culture of the people. Speaking on the mission, the President, who is on a visit to his home town in Birbhum district of West Bengal, made an apt remark by saying that the Government alone could not achieve the mission unless people cooperated with it. A sense of responsibility towards a clean India and pollution free India has to be generated among all in this country. The President reminded the nation that cleanliness was one of the agenda accepted by the UN’s Social Summit held at Copenhagen, the Denmark capital in 1995 where 10 commitments were made. The third commitment was that every country must make the environment clean. Cleanliness of environs is much more important in our country taking into account the tropical climate. Germ, parasites and insects flourish in humid and tropical climate and as such we have to be more careful in keeping the environs clean. We also need to remember that cleaner environment means reducing chances of people catching diseases frequently especially water borne diseases carried through mosquitoes and dengue and flies etc. Reduction of disease means reducing pressure on our health care service, which otherwise, are very expensive. The President is right in proposing that each person who has taken the pledge of keeping the environment clean should enlist a hundred people to join the mission. If each one of us spends two hours a day in keeping the environs clean, it will man a great boost to the planning of the entire scheme.
The Prime Minister, while speaking to the nation on the initiation of the mission Clean India as a service to commemorate our gratitude to the Father of the Nation, very rightly said that it was a non-political programme and had nothing to do with politics. He made it clear that no political motives need to be attributed to the mission as it was purely a social and environmental matter.
It would be in fitness of things if mohalla committees are formed in each locality in towns, cities and villages of India who would take upon itself the responsibility of checking whether their respective localities are kept clean. In each institution, the head of the institution could make it a daily routine to go on a round of the institution and see for himself if the cleanliness mission is regularly carried out and adhered to. The student community from primary class to the highest level have to be educated and trained in rendering social service of keeping environs clean. We will not as yet suggest that a fine should be imposed on anybody found spreading litter and refuse on the roads, streets or parks because before doing that we need to educate the people fully and thoroughly to the extent to believe that cleanliness becomes part of their life. Once that level is attained, we can think of punitive measure for defaulters.
Though the idea of Clean India may not be exclusively given by Prime Minister Modi, but the way in which he has initiated its implementation, rather a campaign to make the slogan transferred to practicality is something very creditable.
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