The Clean India Campaign: A Worthwhile Cause or Just a PR campaign?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the 'Clean India' campaign on the 2nd of October this year with much media fanfare. While details of any plans are hard to come by, the government has decided that we must have a 'clean' India by 2019. In this video, Newsclick discusses the social and political issues regarding the campaign with Prof. Salil Mishra of Ambedkar University. What are the government's actual plans to clean up India and are these sufficient to meet the goals of the campaign? Can development and environmental protection go hand in hand? What lessons can we learn from other countries in this regard? Is the Clean India campaign an example of a PR stunt or can it actually achieve systemic change in India in terms of issues such as caste, access to civic amenities and a change in public attitudes towards our surroundings?

Rough Transcript:

Rishab Bailey (RB): Hello and welcome to Newsclick. The government has on the 2nd of October launched with much fanfare the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' or the 'Clean India Campaign'. We even treated to many grand promises along with photos of ministers, government employees and students sweeping dirt from one side of the street to the other. The obvious problem with this is that it all appears like a well planned PR campaign but, is this a fair assessment of the programme? To discuss the issue we have with us Prof. Salil Misra from Ambedkar University, Delhi. Thanks for being with us today. Now to start with I am naturally suspicious of such programmes, there appears to be no systemic or a well thought out method to deal with the issues surrounding cleanliness in India. So what is your take on the concept itself of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. I mean does the lack of specifics make you vary of this programme?

Salil Misra (SM): Well, ideally, any such campaign should have three components. First is, at the level of the state, massive resources at a very centralised level. Use of modern technologies, investments of huge resources and, so on and so forth, because there is no substitute to it. You have to do it through investments. Investments have to be done by the state. The second is, local adminstration, civic bodies, civil administration etc. Now they have pretty much collapsed in our country and much of the filth and dirt in the cities is largely a result of that. As a part of this campaign, if these bodies could be reactivated, if they could be made more efficient and and if they could be made more accountable, then that could certainly make a difference. Once A and B, 1 and 2 happens, then the third will be automatically put in place, which is a kind of an attitudinal transformation. A change of the level of attitude in which those who keep their houses clean, will also learn to keep the roads, railway stations, bus stands and public spaces clean. So, that will also happen. So, there are these three components; investment by the state, reactivation of the local administration, civil bodies and the third is the change in the attitude.

RB: Now, taking the first two points in particular that you mentioned, which I think is very very important, we have seen, I could say, over the last ten years or more, a move towards privatising a lot of these sectors, whether it is water distribution, so on and so forth. How do you see that actually affecting this issue, which you clearly think is really important, the first issue you mentioned in terms of providing these sort of facilities to the people in general? So, that is my first question. And secondly, connected to that and the current patterns of economic development that we are seeing, or that our present government looks eager to engage in, how does this plan, to have increased economic activity in development in this current model, goes side by side, with ensuring economic sustainability, cleanliness and so on?

SM: Answer to you first question, there are certain essential activities which are being performed by the government, whether the government does it itself, or delegates it to its own bodies, or it delegates it to private bodies which have to be accountable to the government. It doesn't really matter very much so long as these activities acquire a kind of a priority. They are important, they should not be relegated. They can be delegated to the different bodies. On your second point, you see it is true that much of the waste that we talk about, or that we see, it is not really some traditional notion, it's very much we need to put it in context, it is very much a product of modern economic... it's a product of industrialisation, new industries, etc. All industries are, by definition polluting, they create a certain kind of pollution. Now, in Europe when it happened, it created tremendous amount of problems for the European cities and European cities were dirty, they were filthy. In eighteenth and nineteenth centur, many people wrote about it, Charles Dickens wrote on it, Karl Marx wrote on it. These were shanty towns. They was a loss of soul, there was no humanity, no fellow feeling, dirt, filth all over. Now, that was a product of industrialisation and then, in the nineteenth century, in Europe, they started what is called a sanitary revolution. So, industrial revolution was also followed by a sanitary revolution etc. So if you see a certain cleanliness in modern cities, it is not because of modernity, it is because great efforts were made at the level of the state to keep them clean.

RB: Problem is then, that accounts as a cost, if you are actually going to put in effort and put in this sort of money, rather than just relying on the good will of people to work towards cleanliness. It's actually going to be a cost which ensures then that there's an economic loss in that sense or something that previously was unfactored.

SM: Absolutely, so it is not simply a question of attitude or habits and so on. I think, this has to be looked at a different level. It's not just habits and attitudes, it is a question of structures and institutions and histories and priorities. Industrialism creates great profits, it creates affluence. But, that affluence is meaningless, if it comes at a huge social cost. Therefore, some part of that affleunce created by industrialism, has to inevitably be used towards keeping the social life, livable, manageable and therefore, in other words, keeping your city clean and so on.

RB: Now, previous attempts at beautification or cleanliness campaigns in India, whichever way you describe them, whether it's in Chennai, whether it's in Delhi before the Commonwealth games, whether it's Gujarat around the Sabarmati river, and so on, have usually resulted in slums being cleared, so you have slums being relocated to the parts of cities where the affluent or the middle class can not view them essentially, hidden away behind banners. Do you see this present campaing as just another extension of these sort of displacement campaigns, as I would call them?

SM: There is a very serious risk of that. You see, all these drives, talks of cleanliness etc. it also has, what I would call, an elite bias. I would not like to stretch this point beyond a point, cleanliness is in the interest of all. That is not to be doubted. But there is an elite bias, which has a kind of a contradiction to it. The contradiction is simply this... It is called middle class... I would call it a middle class contradiction. You have money so you buy a housing colony. When you buy a housing colony, then you need someone to clean your floor and someone to cook your food and someone to wash your car. In other words, you need a support staff. Now, the support staff is obviously poor and they must come from nearby. So, much of this support staff comes from these Jhuggi-Jhopdis which mushroom almost as a consequence of new colonies and the gated colonies and so on. It seems that those Jhuggi-Jhopdis, they obviously can not maintain themselves, they can not practice your standards of cleanliness and so, then a kind of resentment begins. And the resentment is against them, against their life styles, against their pollutions etc. So, there is a very dangerous, inhuman, elite bias, there can be, in these excercises and I hope that it does not happen...

RB: Now, you've already mentioned how we need to use technology and the government has already spoken of smart cities and so on. But at the same time, you have on one hand, this vision of having smart cities but, at the same time, you have the reality of manual scavenging and other equally abhorrent practices in India. So, how do you square these sort of practice and the vision? Do you see any, for instance, caste elements also coming into this? You have already mentioned about the concept of an elite, looking at the situation in a particular way and therefore, finding a particular way to deal with the situation, by getting rid of these lower classes but surely, there must be a caste relation there?

SM: There is both. First, of course, scavenging is not just an activity in which the marginalised people are involved, it is that, but not just that, it is also very unsafe. It is very hazardous as an activity. Therefore, manual handling of it tends to take its toll on the lives and the health of the people who are involved in it and that is why, we have to look at the West. There are technologies available. These are expensive technologies, but there are technologies that are run by human beings, but these are machines which do the job, and sooner or later, we have to opt for that,we have to opt for mechanisation. That is the simple way out. If you want your cities to be clean, then get the technologies which do some of these cleaning.

RB: But doesn't that lead to the obvious problem of a loss of livelihood for these people because they are not going to be in a position, to be using mechanised... ?

SM: No, no, it does not. You see, this notion that mechanisation replaces human beings, it has turned out not be very true because there whole range of ways in which humans are employed.

RB: Then it must come up with upskilling then, surely...

SM: Yes, but the caste factor is also important because traditonally our caste system has rested on notions of pure and impure, purity and pollution, hierarchy of jobs, certain jobs being superiour to certain other jobs and therefore, a ranking, a heirarchy and which is why, I think, the way Gandhi practiced cleanliness, his main idea was to emphasise the dignity of labour. Once you do something with your own hands, then you tend to impart dignity to that job, because you can emphathise with it. So, dignity of labour is one way, in which caste distinctions and caste hierarchies can be dealt a severe blow. They can be taken care of. So I don't know whether it will happen or not but, there is a very good potential in this campaign of also weakening the institutions of caste.

RB: Are there any specific plans to improve the conditons of the labourers whether it's say, municipal corporation labourers, who are very often on and off contract. I am not talking about labourers who are particularly in a bad situations like manual scavenging.

SM: You see, the thing about this campaign is that nobody knows what the content is. I hope there is a content but it has not been made clear and I am sure there is a blue print, there is a road map, there is a vision, there must be some component, something must be written down, allocation of resources, which activities are going to get what resources, which activities are going to get what priorities over what. I hope it is there, I am assuming it is there but it has not been made public. So, nobody seems to know what this campaign is all about except the symbolism that was on display...

RB: The grief I said that the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan essentially has no systemic plans as such, other than a call for people to do shram daan for two hours a year or...

SM: If it has, we do not know about it. I sincerely hope that it has a content that it has a blue print that it has a road map and that there are resources that are going to be used for it, that there are technologies that are going to be used. I don't know it. Nothing has been made clear. I hope it is there because then it is capable of showing some results. But as of now, it doesn't look as if there is any significant content in it apart from this shell, apart from this form, it is quite a form. It is visible. There was a great pomp and show, there was a great display on the 2nd of October.

RB: Now, a last question, something which you have alluded already. I mean, how do you generally explain the lack of civic sense in India. We all know Indian men in particular love peeing and spitting in public and so on. But at the same time, we have, as you have mentioned, a fairly developed sense of personal hygiene. I mean, what explains the difference in how we treat the personel and how we treat the public. It is often seen and seen most obviously, how people will clean up their own house and immediately dump the garbage right outside their home on the road. Isn't it something that changing social attitude is required to change something like that?

SM: This a problem, definitely a problem of the mind, of the attitude. But I would still say it is relatively less important. You see what happens, there are important cities, Singapore is one example, where a good civic sense was virtually drained into people through a very coercive kind of a system, heavy penalties, and if you do it badly, your license was taken away from you. If you spat or if you were found urinating, then you know there were great penalties, great fines and so on. So, it was out of a very coercive system. It was almost out of a fear of law, that this happened. I would be happier if this outcome is achieved more through voluntary work, more through internalisation, more through realisation and I think that will happen once people see that the civic bodies, the local administration is very sincere and serious about keeping our pubic spaces clean. So, if there are visible efforts to see that our roads, our railway stations, our bus stands, all public places are absolutely being kept spic and span, then people become stake holders in it. They develop a sense of pride and once they develop pride, then they take care of maintaining it.

RB: I've actually noticed that in the Delhi Metro, where a lot of people found that you had this wonderful shiny new service and they were proud of being Delhiites in a sense!

SM: I feel that this should happen, it would happen in the change of mind but I hope this outcome is achieved not so much through coercion and through rules and regulations, a little bit through rules and regulations are fine, they are needed, but it happens more through self realisation and voluntary work and more through a change of attitude.

RB: Well, that's an optimistic note to end this interview on. That's all the time we have on Newsclick right now. Thank you for joining us and thank you for watching.