Some call it a breath of fresh air. Others smirk, calling it a half-hearted attempt at cleanliness. Whichever way one looks at it, the Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan has attracted high attention with the who’s who of the country keen to take to the broom. Most attempts, however, are symbolic. Or shall we say, shambolic? More likely the latter, considering the piles of garbage lying unattended on the roads of the Capital. While our shutterbugs are happy to click pictures of social and political wannabes and even veterans sweeping aside green leaves, as also dried, withered ones on the streets of Lutyens’ Delhi, they have not been as keen to photograph garbage which raises a stink in virtually all parts of the city.
For proof, just go across to a landfill site in Ghazipur on the Delhi-UP border. Here, garbage spreads as far as your eyes can take you. Or stand on the road leading to Old Delhi railway station. It is a road used for defecation by many. Or observe the scene near Fawwara in Chandni Chowk. The T-point accommodates a gurdwara, a mosque, a museum with a temple and a church not too far away. Keeping them all company are uneven piles of garbage. Some of it stays on the truck, more than a bit falls on the road with impatient pedestrians walking on the litter in a hurry to go ahead. Dogs, rats and even stray cows have a field day. A few yards away, a public lavatory announces loud and clear that the air is far from clean and clear.
Or some day, go to the banks of the Yamuna, the river which itself resembles a vast nullah. Garbage dumped in the open, garbage burnt in the open, pooja material being thrown into the river, there is every thing that is anything but swachh. Worse, try driving down with the panes of your car down in East Delhi. Here many road dividers are used as open-air dustbins and walls as public lavatories.
Swachh Bharat, did one say?