Allopath(et)ic broom

Now that it is a few days after news on and analysis about Swachch Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India) inundated every available media inch and second, it is OK for me to think about it a little more calmly.

The broom stick, lo and behold held by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Mr. Modi himself in his hands, is the signal symbol of the plan. It is all about do not litter and do not let others litter, in the words of the prime minister. I do not take exception to this as it is a necessary condition for making India clean. But, is it a sufficient condition?

In layman’s terms, if everyone and his or her cousin stopped littering, will India become clean? OK, I missed defecation in the open. Let me add that too in the message from everyone. As further concession, let me add toxic untreated industrial effluents released into our water bodies to the mix. Then, will India become clean by the appointed date, October 2, 2019?

It will not. How can I be sure? This is where the title of this post enters the picture. Whatever the symbolism of the prime minister wielding the broom, it is merely the case of treating the symptoms, the litter on the roads and around buildings.

The biggest charge against allopathic treatment is it treats the symptoms leaving the underlying causes to roam freely through the body. Hence the broom stick is the equivalent of allopathic treatment.

If we are generating millions of tons of solid waste daily, a significant part of this load must be attributed to our consumption; to make the point doubly clear, wasteful consumption. Just now we, in Tamil Nadu went through the ten day festival of Navarathiri. These ten days, the house is in the control of the lady and she must have gone shopping – and successful it must have been - for trinkets to give as gifts to the visitors, which favor was faithfully returned when the lady visited other houses.

This is double consumption. It is almost the same in the case of Christmas gifts (gents also participate in this ritual, alas). One must take an inventory of all such gifts received and track their usage and shelf life. In many cases, at least among lower middle class, the gifts are plastic household items. No way to dispose them off, except for them to be added to the garbage heap, fortunately far away from one’s house (NIMBY operative). The average shelf life for these trinkets is, from the perspective of the lady of the house mercifully less than a year, to enable the reenactment the next year.

Navarathiri and Christmas gift giving are merely tips of the iceberg. There are a million others that anyone can easily bring under this umbrella. If this wasteful pattern of consumption is not tackled at its source, an assault on the tradition (of meaningless and competitive consumption), the broom is helpless. What the broom does is create a faux clean environment around the house and compensating for the same with added garbage elsewhere.

The Swachch Bharat Abhiyan was itself very sanitized. This aspect of reducing our consumption was never even mentioned in all the programmes. Of course, one raises the immediate question - where will the energy of our enterprises find an outlet. This is the direct result of the foundations of our consumptive economic model.

So a broom stick is nothing more than a broom stick if the underlying causes are not identified, or identified but enough courage has not been gathered to articulate them, leave alone taking any action to amelirate. Therefore, in my humble opinion, it is an allopath(et)ic treatment. Not holistic.

Raghuram Ekambaram