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In 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), it was met with mockery from all circles. While the Opposition chose to call it a rebadged version of the previous government’s Nirmal Bharat Yojana, many questioned the government’s priorities. Indeed, SBM became the Modi government’s most highlighted campaign and has attracted a lot of feedback. It has been praised by many such as Bill Gates, while many chose to call its “coercive nature” an attack on freedom.

The rural component of SBM focussed on building toilets for villagers, and sadly many villagers didn’t take to using them. A Nikkei report however did speak of the fact that it helped women avoid having to out to the fields in the middle of the night, thus ensuring their privacy and safety.

On the urban front, the SBM is far more complex. It looks at tackling municipal solid waste – both collection and processing – and setting up more public toilets and included a crucial section on inculcating a behavioural change. The Swachh Sarvekshan sought to get cities into a friendly competition to see who does best, but that too has its constraints.

Let’s Make Bharat Swachh Again

We must understand that the Prime Minister cannot keep the entire country clean. That is not a possible scenario in a federal structure like ours where local governments may be run by different parties with different priorities. Furthermore, we as a collective society have come to expect our government to do everything, when the real change needs to begin with ourselves.

The fact that after nearly seventy years of independence, the Prime Minister had to prioritise Cleanliness and Sanitation as a national mission speaks volumes of our mindset as a collective group. At the same time, while many accuse SBM of being a rebadged version of previous programmes such as the Total Sanitation Campaign or Nirmal Bharat with more emphasis on advertising, one thing must be kept in mind – publicity works. Good public relations (PR) is important for anything to succeed, which is why currently, it looks like PM Modi is doing little with Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan comes across as a messiah.

Swachh Bharat And Covid-19

The most direct link between Swachh Bharat and the Wuhan Virus spread is the general levels of dirtiness in public spaces in urban India. The most common problems are littering and spitting in public, of which the latter is a bigger concern. Spitting has been a problem – once earning the Railways a whopping Rs 13,000 at a single railway station in West Bengal in a mere six hours. Spitting is also problematic since human saliva can carry the virus. Along with spitting, there are also numerous instances of people blowing their noses or sticking chewed gum on surfaces that are equally dangerous.

In rural areas, the concern is with people using open areas rather than toilets. Research has indicated that the virus can spread through faecal matter, and this isn’t restricted to the current pandemic alone.

Coming Back To Swachh Bharat

In an article for Mint, Manu Joseph argues that the pandemic gives us a chance to transform the country. Joseph is right, for there are many things that can be changed – right from our public distributions system (PDS) to our public transport to education to the way we handle transactions. The last few days have seen Indians order online like never before – Amazon and Flipkart have both reported a major spike in orders. With washing hands and sanitising them being a major message being spread to remain clean, this author has observed small stores, vegetable vendors and others in Mumbai – a city known for running on cash – adopt digital payments over Paytm and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In education, Quartz reports that education technology (ed-tech) will witness a major growth. As for public transport, images of people stuffed like sardines in trains and buses while being required to maintain a social distance seals the deal.

While each of these needs to be dealt with separately, the one single thing that needs to be tackled with on a priority basis is cleanliness and hygiene.

Starting Small, Going Big

The ban proposed by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on gutka and paan masala is the first step towards a cleaner environment. The state’s chief secretary Awnish Awasthi mentioned spitting in the open after their consumption as a key motivator behind the ban. By banning the products, the government is making it easier for sanitation workers.

Any plan towards hygiene and cleanliness will have to be divided into two phases – a short term one and a long term one.

In the short term, Swachh Bharat for urban areas needs to be carried out on a war footing. This includes proper sewerage facilities across the municipal limits of all major cities. To give an example, in 2013, the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board said that the city would require a minimum of ten years   for each household to have a water and sewerage pipeline. Such projects need to be fast-tracked at both the Central and State Level.  Solid waste management needs to be improved across cities along with efficient garbage disposal systems. Redevelopment of slums too needs to be taken care of. It is disheartening that Asia’s second largest slum is located in Dharavi, Mumbai and despite the best efforts by former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the project did not take off. While bans on gutka and similar products are welcome, municipal corporations need to focus on tackling the menace of spitting, urination and defecation in public. Psychology plays an important role in this – a dirty space will attract more dirt, and cleaning it remains the only solution.

In the long term, the concept of cleanliness and hygiene needs to be given a heavier presence in our education system. Just like Swachh Sarvekshan gets cities into competition, each individual resident needs to take pride in their personal cleanliness, and this can only be achieved by ensuring its active presence in their education. Students must be taught not to litter, spit or defecate in public, and to segregate biodegradable waste from non-biodegradable waste – a crucial requirement that will also eventually bring down pollution in the National Capital Region. We also need to slowly shed our consumerist mindset and return to our roots of reduce, reuse and recycle as compared to the current use and throw model.

The Swachh Bharat Mission has a lot of impact on every individual present in society. Right from the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich, everyone is impacted in various ways by the lack of cleanliness of public spaces and the associated risk of disease.

Bringing In More Innovation

When SBM was launched, it eventually saw a series of apps that helped users locate the nearest public toilet. Eventually tech giant Google too jumped on the bandwagon with a massive list on their Maps app. The next major innovation saw unmanned public toilets such as the eToilet being developed.  Eventually, we might someday be able to offer cleaner toilets on long-distance buses as well.

On the matter of plastic waste, with the Railways’ setting up water vending machines that sell water for one-third the cost of a water bottle at major railway stations, we can slowly look at phasing out water bottles from railway stations.

With so many problems to be solved – from solid waste to landfills – the scope of innovation is endless. It is here that the Centre must consider giving focus to these sectors under the various StartUp India and the Atal Innovation Mission to get more research and development flowing in these sectors. The global pandemic might have sent our economy into a turmoil, but its silver lining is that when we emerge from this pandemic, we can build ourselves better and stronger.

This article was originally written in March 2020 and submitted to an online publication who decided not to run it. I’d really appreciate it if you could back me up by maybe becoming a patron?