Environmental cleanliness – burning issue of our current modern India

In India, our approach is we know how to clean our stuff, but we never bother about our environmental cleanliness. We keep our houses clean, but don’t bother whether the streets on which we walk are littered or not, or perhaps for that matter, are clean or not. We obviously will put a mask on face when there is stinky odor of waste garbage which is not collected by municipality, but we only just open the windows of car and throw empty bottles/ garbage on streets. We never bother about facilities like railway station, bus stops, airports and other public places like garden, beaches or even cinema halls. Simple thing like flushing a public toilet after use is difficult to find. All of us face it day in and day out but after all, who cares?? This approach needs to be change. We have to accept that there is need for behavioral change as far as cleanliness is concerned. Our approach rather behavior can be modified and changed provided we improvise or rather implement our knowledge of cleanliness to practice. We all know the fact that cleaning is important, but real question is how many of us practice it? If we miss the opportunity now, we are already landing up with great disaster on global level that is managing the waste. Unclean environment is one of the major reasons for the pollution. We have 1.5 billion population; per capita waste generation nationally is around 0.5Kg(Exactly 0.498 Kg) as per 2011 data, with increase of 49% between 2001 and 2011. So, challenges are not at one level, it is at multiple levels. Unless we realize the problem, there can never be solution. Formulation of guidelines is easy, just take some other country and study that, and copy paste. But realizing that there is need for country specific guidelines, studies on social structure of society and understanding cleanliness perspective will be of help but it’s a difficult task, not so easy. Probably we have learnt to quick fix more appropriately (Jugad) unless we land up in some disaster which also we try to fix appropriately. One day, these shortcuts are not going to work, and we must learn to put little extra efforts for cleanliness, in a way that better understanding is there in society and which perhaps improves our universal image for cleanliness.