Why is India so dirty?

This is a post which is a product of my reply to one of my friend's emails. This friend emailed me congratulating me about the blog while raising her frustration and apathy towards the lack of cleanliness in India. I replied her with my take on the causes behind this: 

I think that is a culmination of several factors. Lack of civic sense, lack of infrastructure (dust bins, regular cleaning etc etc etc) and apathy of people seeing the lack of infrastructure. But I believe the most important factor is putting too many people in a small place with lack of opportunities for everyone to make a decent living. Cleanliness and civic sense involves one's responsibility to take care of his/her fellow citizens. When you use a public restroom, to use it in a fashion that the next person can have a good user experience as you did. But the lack of resources create this atmosphere of survival, self-centeredness and lack of concern and remorse of the wrong that one does. This leads to a domino effect. You take 100 people with this attitude and you get this big mess. Then the next 300 people feel apathetic about their helplessness and feel that them doing the right thing will not make any difference. 

Consciousness plays a big role in sustaining this behavior. Consciousness is something which does not stop us from doing the wrong thing, it stops us from enjoying it. But when you do the wrong thing ample number of times, your conscious will normalize the wrong behavior.

What India needs is hope, hope that one person's right behavior can make a difference, hope that things can change, hope that people will change. Right deeds can also have a domino effect and we can all live with unburdened consciousness. But the foremost thing is that, for majority, earning a decent livelihood should not be such a herculean task. This will lead to people having more time and willingness to understand their surroundings and to be involved in nation building.

I was particularly impressed with one such movement which is based in Banglore City. "The Ugly Indian". They have a website and a facebook page.

Cheers!

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