Swachh Bharat-A critical analysis

There was a flurry of activity in the media on October 2, 2014, when the newly elected prime minister Narendra Modi launched his pet project- Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Social media was full of opinions from netizens, Bollywood superstars extended their support to the initiative, print media started devoting an additional page for op-eds on the issue, ‘experts' were testing the limits of their vocal chords on Arnab's Newshour and even the members of parliament were undertaking the arduous job of cleaning the (already clean) footpaths of the Lutyens and then tweeting about it. Now that the initial hysteria has somewhat subsided, it is a time opportune for questioning the conscience of the nation's citizen and also for looking at ‘Swachh India' from a vantage point.
        

I believe the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan can be looked at comprehensively if we break it down to these three fundamental questions that I address, in an intermixed fashion:

1. What is Swachh Bharat from an ideological, political and social point of view? ;

2. Where have we faltered? ; and

3. Why did we need the program in the first place? 

Starting from Mahatma Gandhi, the broom has been used as a symbol. Mahatma Gandhi used the broom as a symbol to integrate Harijans with the rest of the society. He encouraged ‘everyone to be his own scavenger' in order to separate the identity of Harijans from the jobs they had to do because of the vice of being born to a family of untouchables. Thereafter, broom has been a symbol of Gandhism. More recently, it was adopted as the election symbol of the Aam Aadmi Party to symbolize party's promise to cleanse the government institutions of corruption. The question that must be answered is whether the broom has broken the confines of symbolism with respect to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan? In other words, how successful has the program been?

To be sure, the idea of a clean India is intrinsically a noble thought. Maybe this is the reason why (almost) all political parties stand by the project of Swachh Bharat ideologically. But the idea of Clean India needs to go beyond the ‘in-principle' support from the political spectrum. What about the vision and plans for the program? Most importantly what about the implementation? Prima facie, it appears that work has been done in all three- vision, planning and implementation. Speaking in particular about south Delhi, the garbage at the dumping site is confined to a few large containers which the truck clears every morning. The service of free door-to-door garbage collection van is a blessing as well. An impressive budget has been sanctioned for the initiative and the campaign is reaching out to the public with a massive publicity campaign which includes Vidya Balan campaigning for toilets, Kapil Sharma supporting the cause on his shows and Narendra Modi charging the audience in Madison Square Garden.

However, there are faults in the line of argument exposited above. First, developments in south Delhi need not mean that the entire country is basking in the glow of cleanliness. Second, an impressive budget does not translate into implementation across the nation and third, a publicity campaign might push the frontiers of social mindset but it sure will not mean unequivocal success.In fact, Swaraj Abhiyan reported that out of the allocated ₹336 crores till now, only ₹2.22 crores have been spent in Delhi. The North and East municipal corporations have not spent a rupee from the sanctioned budget whereas the South Delhi Municipal Corporation has spent only ₹1.86 crore from its allocation of ₹66.47 crores. They have cited procedural ambiguities in using these funds which suggests that the mission is not as well planned as it appears to be on the surface.

The staunch supporters of the Swachh Bharat mission might argue that nothing is perfect and certainly no government scheme/program is perfect. There might be some truth in this statement but there is an arena where the Swachh Bharat mission has faltered quite badly, to which I now turn.The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan could have been used as a potent tool to disrupt the status-quo of the caste hierarchy and more importantly, poverty. It is well established that the ‘menial' jobs of skinning the dead animals, sweeping the roads, cleaning the latrines and gutters, cremating the dead have been performed by the untouchables. Manual scavenging is a testimony to the fact that the ghastly job of cleaning the sewers manually continues till date (even after the court ordering against it) in the posh colonies of the metropolitans. Couldn't the Swachh Bharat funds be used to mechanize the process of de-silting the sewers? Couldn't those funds be used to help find those manual scavengers an alternative, dignified employment?

Another issue which merits attention is the growing trend of the government to resort to contractual labor. Teachers, doctors, nurses, Anganwadi workers, ASHA workers and safai karamcharis-no one has been spared. The case of safai karamcharis, however, begs of special attention due to the abysmally low wages paid by their contractors. Being hired on a contractual basis means that the government authority need not be concerned about who the workers are, whether they are getting regular wages or whether they have the requisite training and equipment to handle waste or clean the sewers. The result is that the contractual labor is caught in a poverty trap. The contractual labor gets low wages (a field report by Ravish Kumar from NDTV suggests this to be ₹4500 per month), he saves less, he is unable to afford quality education and dies a premature death from the methane gas he has inhaled in the sewers. His son/daughter is brought up as an unskilled worker and continues to be trapped in poverty. What good is reservation when there is not enough to eat, let alone afford education?

The recent strikes in the municipal corporations of Delhi were again a punch in the face of the Swachh Bharat Mission. It occurs to the wise that had the funds been used to pay the karamcharis instead of spending crores in advertisements, India would have inched closer to the vision of the program. The toilets made using the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan subsidy in Saharbadh village, UP have the caste of the family painted on it.

In conclusion, allow me to pose some questions. Why is this nation so filthy? Are our notions of ‘development' flawed which lead us to such filth? Do we need an alternative notion of development-one which creates sustainable societies and no one is required to clean somebody else's filth? These questions should, in my view, be the direction towards which the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan should be moving.

It is indubitable that the mission has had a positive impact on the society. Both public and private toilets have been constructed en masse and are being used. Filthy roads, beaches, and subways have been cleaned across the nation.

That said, much remains to be done. Regularisation of contract workers in municipalities, timely payment of their salaries, mechanization of de-silting work in sewers, and simplification of procedures for using funds allotted and most importantly, a greater emphasis on the growing menace of air and noise pollution in urban and semi-urban areas would go a long way in achieving Mahatma Gandhi's dream of a Swachh Bharat.

References:

1.      Swaraj Abhiyaan https://www.swarajabhiyan.org/content/news/416

2.      NDTV India, Primetime with Ravish Kumar (29,30 September 2014 and 25 January 2017)

3.      Indian Express, NDTV, The Hindu and Hindustan Times for news reports on strike of sanitation workers in Delhi

4.      Twitter: https://twitter.com/swachhbharat