Millions on streets to take part in prime minister Modi’s Clean India mission

Millions of Indians armed with brooms, rakes and mops began a nationwide drive yesterday to clean up their garbage-infested country. Led by prime minister Narendra Modi, thousands of politicians, civil servants, schoolchildren and members of the public enthusiastically participated in his Clean India mission by sweeping the littered streets of the capital, New Delhi.

Elsewhere, in provincial towns, legislators, teachers and eager citizens cleared away mounds of stinking garbage and cleaned up ditches and parks choked with filth.

“We can’t let India remain unclean any longer,” Mr Modi declared as he led a massive Delhi crowd in making a pledge that each individual would spend 100 hours a year cleaning up their immediate environment. “Don’t we all have a duty to clean the country?” he asked.

Mr Modi chose the anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the struggle for India’s independence and was a passionate advocate for cleanliness, to launch his five-year campaign to alter India’s image as one of the world’s filthiest countries.

“If we can all come together and make this a people’s movement, then I think that we can have our name amongst the cleanest cities and countries of the world,” he said.

Earlier, Mr Modi, who has made cleanliness and hygiene a major plank of his administration since assuming office four months ago, enthusiastically wielded a broom in one of Delhi’s indigent and garbage-infested neighbourhoods.

The prime minister’s campaign is also part of a long-term plan to build public toilets and end the practice of defecation in the open, which leads to disease and exposes women to the risk of rape and sexual assault, as they are forced to use public places to relieve themselves.

No access to toilets

More than half of India’s population of 1.2 billion does not have access to toilets and just 43 per cent of households have running tap water in their dwellings. According to the World Bank, illness from lack of hygiene reduces India’s gross domestic product by 6.4 per cent each year.

Mr Modi has vowed that by 2019, when India celebrates the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth, his country will not have even a “speck of dirt” in any village or city.

Most Indians concurred that such a cleanliness drive was long overdue, especially in government offices that are notorious for their filth and squalor. The walls of almost all such premises, including those in Delhi, are splattered with betel nut juice spittle and open spaces are crammed with litter, making them breeding grounds for rats, cockroaches and other disease-carrying insects.

India’s increased prosperity over the past two decades, too, has generated more garbage.

Many cities, including Delhi, do not have functioning waste-management systems to deal with the hundreds of tons of refuse generated every day, which spews on to streets and vacant plots.

Massive rubbish dumps in several towns have, over years, become landmarks to guide people to their destinations.