The waste of India

“Different people's houses smell like different weird things. God forbid someone should come and nail down what my house smells like. It'd probably be a litter box... sweaty socks... and burnt bacon. That probably is what it smells like..” - Wendi McLendon-Covey

While most of us may not know who Wendi McLendon- Covey is, we all can imagine the kind of disgust he has tried to portray about the aspect of littering our own home. To litter is a disease which is not at all uncommon for the people of our country. It comes as naturally to us as breathing. With a population of more than billions (and counting!), it is not surprising that lack of awareness has caused dear to the cleanliness of our country. Since times immemorial, chewing of ‘paan masala’ (considered manliness) has shown it signs on innumerable walls of our country! Take for instance this below picture:



So they said they are going to transform Mumbai into Shanghai! Well, not if people keep dumping filth left, right and center. In fact, the places where there are signboards of not throwing garbage, filth etc witness the maximum dump of garbage.The whole world is considered dustbin for that matter in our country at our disposal. If all the garbage that people dump in India was to magically get converted into notes, not a single poor would have to stay hungry for the rest of his life! If we ourselves don’t keep our country in a clean condition, what else can we expect of tourists? No matter what we inherit or no, one thing Indians have inherited over the ages is the philosophy of “Never mind.” Whether making the once-clean juhu beach a daily defecating zone, or throwing garbage openly on the path to our heritage structures, there is no stopping the great Indian litterbug.

Here’s a hilarious video on how a newborn child who is too innocent to even understand the meaning of filth, gets trained towards contributing towards the waste of India:



Spitting openly is another deadly virus that has hit our country since times immemorial. There is a joke spreading around that the Red Fort got its color because of stains of pan spits over it over a number of years. The situation gets even worse in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where you will find all varieties of filth and everywhere- on roads, inside the houses, on trains- people literally wouldn’t mind spitting next to each other if that was not explicitly prohibited!

In the end, we have to take note that we have to clean up our act, quite literally! Initiatives like Clean India campaign are just a starting step towards a cleaner India. Initiatives like cleaning the beaches, installing dustbins on platforms and all those places which are prone to attacks by the great India litterbug need to be protected. Only then will be able to proudly dram of our cities becoming as clean as some of the others of the world!