The photo ops were many as India launched its Swach Bharat or Clean India mission. Everyone who was anyone wielded a broom on October 2nd 2014. Millions even took a pledge. The mission comes at a whopping price: lacs of crores rupees. Our tech savvy PW even initiated a challenge that roped in celebrities of all shades and hues: each one was to get 9 more people and so on. From sanitation for all to clean drinking water; from littering to garbage disposal the task is daunting. That it is needed is unquestionable. But many questions do come to mind.

First and foremost why did it take us as a nation almost 7 decades to realise we needed a clean India. And why have all the previous efforts failed. Unless we answer these questions, we will not be able to ensure its success. What first comes to mind is why we as individuals have failed to keep our surroundings clean. We do pride ourselves as a civilisation that promotes cleanliness above all else, but having baths everyday does not ensure a clean land.

To my mind, the main problem is our social structure that assigns the task of ‘cleaning’ and particularly toilets to one group of persons who it is believed are ‘born’ to do so. I get enraged when I see people unwilling to pick up a piece of garbage themselves. They would rather wait in the dirt for the right person to appear than clean the mess themselves. As long as this remains our attitude, things cannot change. After the launch of the said mission at India Gate, one would have hoped that those present – be it school children or VIPs – would not leave litter behind. But that was not the case, they place was left littered with water bottles and discarded copies of the pledge and as is always the case in India, the cleaners came by afterwards and did the job.

These people sadly do not always work in ideal conditions. The picture above shows how a clogged drain is unclogged in India. Maybe the need of the hour would be to provide protective gear to ALL those who have to handle garbage or dirt of any kind. My heart goes out to the rag pickers, often children whose hands and feet get cut because we have placed broken glass or open blades in our daily garbage. I wonder how many of the photo op subject would have agreed to plunge their bare body in the drain in the picture. I guess were that to be necessary than as was done in Slumdog Millionaire, the pit would have been filled with chocolate or peanut butter and the said VIP would have then agreed to descend in the ‘dirt’ and have his picture taken.

As long as casteism is the order of the day, things cannot change. We will always look over our shoulder for the right person to come and clean our mess. But things are not sacrosanct. I remember my mother meeting a cleaner of Indian Origin and of a higher caste in a Heathrow bathroom. She was quick to admit sheepishly that she would NEVER tell her family back home about the nature of our work. That is who and what we are and unless we change this attitude, we will never have a clean India.

In free India, everyone should have equal opportunities and no one need be branded by birth. Those who belong to what we call the lower’ castes want out of this stranglehold and have aspirations and dreams for their children, and they should as they too are protected by our Constitution. Laws and punishment will not bring the change we seek. It is mindset that have to be changed. We have to change our habits and ways: spitting pan, throwing wrappers, chucking plates and cups anywhere and so on. But we also need to change our attitude and accept to clean anything, even a toilet.

I have had several occasions where I have been compelled to lead a toilet cleaning campaign often in conference centres and other institutions. Now my team comprised of well educated youngsters of hallowed caste and class. I could see resentment on their faces when they realised I was about to embark on a loo sprucing mission. That is not what they had signed for. But I must admit that each and every time it took only a few moments before everyone hitched their saris or rolled their sleeves and took to the task. All I needed to do was start scrubbing the filthiest loo. Even today I have no qualms undertaking any cleanliness campaign as I will not sit in a filthy place. At project why every staff cleans the classroom and toilet they work in.

Traditions and mores have to change with time and though we need to keep the good ones, we also need to have the courage to cast away those that have gone obsolete or are impediments to our development.

I will urge all to give some thought to what I have said and to lend your voice to the people who still clean our filth in inhuman conditions.

The last few days have been rather euphoric with all the hype given to the Prime Minister’s visit to the USA and his pitch for INDIA. I guess we all got a bit taken in and felt that things would change on the round in no time. It was indeed heartwarming to hear the PM talking of sanitation, poverty removal and imparting of skills to the young. The elation was short lived though as a snippet of information given to me by one of my staff made for a rude awakening. The children of our Govindpuri centre simply shared a piece of information of their daily school life probably unaware of the effect it would have on me. Hold your breath! In this new India that is being feted with super zeal, class VIII children of a Government school located in upmarket South Delhi are being taught four subjects by guess who: their physical education teacher better known as the PT Master.

This may sound like a light hearted piece of information but to me it is nothing short of scary. If good education can change a life for the better, we all know what no or poor education can do. I will not dwell on that. The fact is that in overcrowded classes, where a period is 35 minutes and with a Gym Instructor teaching all true subjects, your chances of breaking barriers and ceilings is minute. Thus the prospect of a child studying in such circumstances being able to get a school leaving certificate with sufficient marks and thus aspire to the skills mentioned by our PM is close to nil. Unless something is done for such children NOW, they are certain to miss the boat altogether and condemned to the same plight as their parents. What is sad is, that it is not the fault of the parents who took the decision to come to the city for their children’s future, but of the powers that be who have allowed state run schools to come to this. What is baffling is that there is no dearth of potential teachers in our country so why does a gym teacher have to teach the 3Rs is beyond comprehension, unless of course it is part of some wily agenda we are not privy to.

When I heard our brand new PM talk sanitation and other such matters,one felt a ray of hope, but though one does not want to join the rank of naysayers who find fault in everything, it is a sad reality that many change will come too late for many children of India, as children cannot wait for change to happen.

Hearing the PM and his plans for India, one may have thought that NGOs like ours would soon be redundant and would have to either close their doors or reinvent themselves, but that is not so. As long as classes are overcrowded and teachers few; as long as state run schools do not become centres of excellence, we are needed to provide the bridge they need to cross to better morrows.