Hygeine, Seriously?
Hygeine, Seriously?
Hygeine, Seriously?
With the Commonwealth Games, India hoped to put on a spectacular show of display of its economic prowess and reaffirm its age-old repute as the most hospitable of nations. Instead, the event has gone on to become an ugly spectacle of India's corrupt babudom and governmental ineffectiveness, being witnessed by an international audience, reaffirming the very myths that Indian leaders had hoped to dispel. Foremost amongst the issues has been health, hygiene and sanitation the quintessential thorn in this touted rising economic powers' back.
Complaints of unsanitary conditions inside the games village, a facility constantly endorsed as being world class by the games' organizers have poured in from the very first batch of international athletes to have taken accommodation. Sportspersons and teams from various countries have been left horrified at entrances and bathrooms swarming in filth, and soiled rooms, threatening to pull out their participation. Several times in the last few months, Indians have woken up to frontpage newspaper headlines and pictures of this mess and their shame at what they till only a few months ago, held as a monumental event of national pride.
Above all this din, however, is the furore over a statement made by Lalit Bhanot, the organizing committee secretary-general, whose defense has been that "everyone has different standards of cleanliness. The Westerners have different standards, we have different standards", suggesting that India's standards of hygiene are much lower than those of other countries. While the media has had a field day drawing anti-national analogies to his remark, adding to the general public's ire and the cyberspace getting filled with blogs venting their hatred for the man; I can't help asking myself if Bhanot has been entirely wrong.
Now, don't get me wrong, my loyalties certainly haven't changed and I am as pained as the next person to see such shame being brought upon my nation. But I do believe that this is one aspect about our country that is a glaring reality, as much as we could wish it away and in that light, I wonder if there is any harm in talking about it?
Take for example, the ubiquitous pan-chewing Indian male who only needs the expanse of a two-centimeter gap to let loose artistic creations of red squiggles on pristine walls, roads, and often ironically, right under signs that scream "do not spit here". Or the casual flick of our hands as we throw away everything from polythene bags, wrappers, fruit skins, plastic bottles, and the remainder of food even, in the nearest crevice and more conveniently, all around it. Even the ease with which we clear out our homes and dumb the garbage over the fence into a neighbours' backyard, or in front of the gate, as long as it is on the outside of our boundaries'.
Now, come to think of it, would we dare to commit the same act in a foreign land? Would we ever defy the sacrosanct code of discipline in another country? Don't we all become the epitome of hygiene, willing to clean up after ourselves in a foreign country from the minute we step onto the airport tarmac? Then why do we shrug off the very thought in our own or even express aghast at its mention?
What changes our motives as soon as we step out of the country? What makes us law-abiding, hygiene-promoting citizens in countries that we are only visiting for a few days or weeks, while we shy away from taking responsibility for the hygiene of our own neighbourhood?
It appears that as we are increasingly becoming slaves to modern day conveniences, we are discarding all our environmental friendly, decency imbibed civic sense, or whatever little of it we had preserved.
Our growing population and increasing levels of consumption have given rise to significant waste management issues. Thousands of tons of garbage are produced in India's major cities each day and the amount of trash lying around is often shocking to visitors. Thus, what Bhanot has done, is only publicly talk about India's dirty secret, which I believe is the bigger crime as seen through the eyes of the public. He has put to words, what all of us have known all along and that is essentially the cause for his crucifixion.
Yet, for all the pessimism that I exude, I still believe that hygiene is the smaller of our issues. Cleaning out a few hundred rooms in a games village to bring them upto a certain standard of cleanliness is not where the real challenge lies. According to me the trouble is brewing at a much deeper level, where Bhanot's comments or our defense to salvage the country's repute hold no meaning. They lie at a depth, which can be addressed, but by one question, which if I may try to articulate, lies in "Do we Indians take our hygiene too casually?"
At the end, I am glad to say the complete experience our visitors had was excellent, not only due to the spectacular finale.
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