SWACHH SHOW – NCR’S SHAME

Residents of the national capital region (NCR) woke up on the freezing morning of 12 January, pondering over the results of the Swachh Survekshan making bold headlines in all major dailies. Of course, for many social media posts had dropped the bombshell the previous evening and everyone was ruing the same thought “not again”. Residents of Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad and Faridabad were not exactly expecting to join the elite league of Indore and Surat but there was certainly hope of improvement after reading newspaper stories about how the authorities were trying hard to implement measures for cleaning up the cities in the NCR – show pieces for the governments – states and Union – to present to many distinguished visitors. We don’t need an Einstein to draw the conclusion that most claims were baseless and there was no real action on the ground. Already struggling with severe air quality, debilitating fog and poor visibility, we can now add this dubious distinction to our cities like Gurgaon and hang our collective heads in shame.

It is really a mystery that cities that can rightfully boast of beautiful additions to infrastructure - Bharat Mandapam, Yashoibhumi, Delhi Metro, RRTS, Central Vista Redevelopment, New Delhi World Trade Centre, New Delhi Railway Station, Bharat Vandana Park, (some of these work in progress) Delhi - Mumbai Expressway, Dwarka Expressway, Noida International Airport, New Parliament House, ever improving commercial, retail and residential complexes that match the best in the world ‒ just cannot manage cleanliness! What is the real problem? Is there no will to do so? Is there political wrangling? Are the people not cooperating? Bright minds in the government (states and central) must sit down, put their heads together and solve this utterly shameful issue. We are forever solving highly complex international problems, mediating all over the world but have failed to clean up our own house. 

We are building national highways and adding modern trains at a speed that is second to none in the world; we can now make our own fighter jets and aircraft carriers, have landed our research craft on the moon, are collecting a lot of scientific data about Mars and the Sun but become utterly inefficient in handling our city waste and cleaning up the water that we drink and the air we breathe. No matter how many water and air purifiers we use in the offices and residences of our very capable bureaucrats and ministers, still they too are drinking polluted water and breathing polluted air, pray why can’t we remove this collective kalank (slur) on our foreheads?

I remember meeting Mr S.R. Rao, IAS – former municipal commissioner of Surat – in February 1999. I was the president of AIMA at that time and we were felicitating him for the great work he and his colleagues had done in cleaning up Surat, the city ravaged by a deadly plague. The AIMA already had a well-established ‘JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award’ which was given every year on our Foundation Day ‒ 21 February. The recipient this time was the celebrated scientist Dr R.A. Mashelkar, Director General CSIR for his outstanding achievements and ‘corporatizing scientific research so that it could improve lives of the people’. 

Incidentally some of the earlier recipients of this award were top corporate czars like Aditya Birla, Deepak Parekh and Narayanamurthy. The AIMA Council had also decided to add a new one this time, the ‘Public Service Excellence Award’ and it was being conferred on Mr. Rao. Honourable Vice President of India the late Shri Krishan Kant handed over the citation to Mr Rao, who had by then assumed chairmanship of Vishakhapatnam Port Trust. Honourable VPI mentioned in his speech “It is technology that holds the key to the future evolution of the role of the state in human affairs. The management of modern societies and human settlement will, no doubt, bank on the resources provided by technology to accomplish given tasks. Both awards that are being given today, for Corporate Excellence and Excellence in Public Service, can be said to be bonded together by a common theme ‒ Technology.”

In India we have no dearth of brilliant government officers, scientists and engineers. Can’t the government motivate them and channelise their ideas and energy to solve the shameful problem of cleaning up our Capital Region. Let NCR become a model clean habitat which can then be replicated in other cities. Gurgaon – the city that was christened ‘Millennium City’ should rise to justify that sobriquet! Gurgaon houses perhaps 400/450 of the Fortune 500 global companies; their executives live in magnificent complexes like The Camellias, Magnolias and Aralias around the fabulous DLF Golf Course as well as many other great habitats in the city. Why should Gurgaon not be a clean city? Why can’t it join Surat and   Indore on top of the list instead of being at the shameful rank 140 out of 446 cities that were surveyed? It started with rank 37 out of 73 in the first survey in 2016 and then yo-yoed at 112/434, 105/434, 83/425, 62/425, then oh so glorious 24/425 in 2021 and 19/382 in 2022 before falling to the unmentionable 140/446 in the last survey! 

We are all aware of the ‘Bandh Wari Landfill Mountain’ forever growing on the prestigious Gurgaon-Faridabad road – which also houses establishments like The International Solar Alliance’ on which both Prime Minister Modi and the French President have driven to inaugurate the great campus and also TERI ‒ that champion of sustainability! This ugly eyesore ‘Bandh Wari Mountain’ continues to become taller every year with leachate poisoning subsoil water and a terrible stench hitting the nostrils of lakhs who traverse this road daily. It is unfortunate that the government and ECO-Green, the contractor responsible for handling the waste at this place have failed to resolve their differences on the mutual agreement for almost 10 years! Can’t our civic bodies – including the fancied GMDA – and technologists put their heads together and rid us of this eyesore that is causing huge damage to the health of residents, especially our children. How can we live with the fact that Navi Mumbai (rank 3), Ahmedabad (5) Greater Hyderabad (9) NOIDA (14) for heaven’s sake even Ghaziabad (38) and the much-maligned MCD (90) are streets ahead of Gurgaon? Or do we take sadistic pleasure in the fact that Kolkata (438) and Chennai (199) are worse? Or, may be, we are smug that NDMC (read Lutyens Delhi) a city within the UT of Delhi has secured Rank 1 and also received ‘5-star garbage free’ and ‘Water Plus’ certificates.

In all fairness, I must add that the yeomen effort that had brought Surat out of the horrible mess was people’s cooperation in addition to civic and bureaucratic efforts. Mr Rao had told me that people were sensitised and became a part of the determined drive. Sadly, the majority of residents of Gurgaon are just not lending a hand to keep their city clean. In fact, they deliberately create obstacles in the work of civic authorities, throw garbage unabashedly everywhere, never segregate their domestic waste, waste millions of litres of water and do precious little to keep the city clean and make it sustainable. We have to urgently launch a strong drive, on a war footing, to sensitise the people by telling them about the horrors of what they are doing. We do not teach our children enough in schools so that they can convince their parents at home to work on cleanliness … in short do everything possible to rid our city of the kalank (slur) of being at number 140 on the National Cleanliness Index.

Our country can handle very big challenges, why not this one? We become united in times of wars – this is no less than a war! We can host a crore or more people during Kumbh Melas at Hardwar and Prayagraj even during Covid and succeed in avoiding any major spread of disease. I am sure we can tackle the problem of ‘Gurgaon’s filth’ if only authorities, corporates and civil society are to work together.

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Author is trustee of The Climate Project Foundation India. He is past President of AIMA and former member of the BOG of IIMC.