Urban Mirror

Dr. Smita Pandey

On World Environment Day, we must focus on what the Father of our nation had exhorted us -Clean governance will only ensure a clean environment. Decades of planning, innumerable programmes ample funds, multifarious schemes, huge departments with an adept  bureaucracy to implement them notwithstanding, even the most basics of development have not been put into place. Basic sanitation, supply of potable water, sewerage, regular electricity are lacking even in advanced coveted VIP cities while their inconsequential lesser known ones wallow in abysmal neglect .The much purported development in just this one example serves as a template for all the tall claims being made in the name of  smartly efficient governance.

This was a speech made by Gandhiji on February 4, 1916, on the august occasion of the foundation of the Banares Hindu University.

“I want to think audibly this evening. I do not want to make a speech and if you find me this evening speaking without reserve, pray, consider that you are only sharing the thoughts of a man who allows himself to think audibly, and if you think that I seem to transgress the limits that courtesy imposes upon me, pardon me for the liberty I may be taking. I visited the Vishwanath temple last evening, and as I was walking through those lanes, these were the thoughts that touched me. If a stranger dropped from above on to this great temple, and he had to consider what we as Hindus were, would he not be justified in condemning us? Is not this great temple a reflection of our own character? I speak feelingly, as a Hindu. Is it right that the lanes of our sacred temple should be as dirty as they are? The houses round about are built anyhow. The lanes are tortuous and narrow. If even our temples are not models of roominess and cleanliness, what can our self-government be? Shall our temples be abodes of holiness, cleanliness and peace as soon as the English have retired from India, either of their own pleasure or by compulsion, bag and baggage? 

More than a century later, his prophetic words resonate even louder today. The lanes are just as dirty, the houses around still haphazardly built and the ceaseless queue of pilgrims stoically bears the numerous difficulties which are integral  to an acclaimed  visit to the revered city. It is even more ironic that this pathetic state prevails when we have an overtly pro temple Rightist swearing by Hindutva government in power! It is the constituency of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi too.

This is only the physical landscape. Gandhian prescience is uncanny. Buildings can become abodes of cleanliness only when  our conduct will be ‘fit’. Swach Bharat will not come about by sloganeering alone. It requires honest, sincere committed governance. These efforts have to stem from moral courage. Then only transformation occurs .The ethical drive has been absent. Smart cities are a necessary corollary. They cannot grow in the barrenness of apathetic conventional planning  in which the insidious builder/official nexus prevails and subsumes all. 

Meanwhile we are fed rhetoric. We are about to witness a urban renaissance- a Smart City is a liveable city to the people with required amenities like clean drinking water, sanitation, toilets, infrastructure etc.  ‘Mission Transform nation’ seeks to transform cities into sustainable centres of economic activity and provide improved quality of life to citizens. Our benchmarks continue to be set at the lowest  -by every government. When will this toxicity of false pledges, fake promises, dishonest avowals and misleading projections polluting our national environment end?

High and prolonged exposure to the chemicals/ pollutants emitted during unsafe e-waste recycling leads to damage of nervous systems, blood systems, kidneys and brain development, respiratory disorders, skin disorders, bronchitis, lung cancer, heart, liver, and spleen damage, a  study, by ASSOCHAM-NEC , said apart from irreparable damage to our physical environment. What about the deleterious  effects of tainted governance ? What  is being done by any political party to  combat the lethal consequences of  unprincipled, grabbing power at any cost politics? Mafia dons, jailbirds, bootleggers, convicts, scamsters  and every type of criminal continue to exercise predominant influence in governance. We continue to languish in the ranks of the backward devoid of the basics of existence. 

When will this clean climate change occur ? When will we detoxify ? When will our politics  be worthy of credit rating ?Can we use digital technology to bring about transparency and accountability in governance  as well as force  service delivery to its citizens? Is there any  Mission to restore probity and eliminate noxious virulents-  communalism, casteism, poverty and corruption which are afflicting our bodypolitic and polluting governance completely? As long as politics continues to be dirty, as long as muckraking justifies the scams of all in governance-your scam is bigger than mine, if you expose me I will strip you too-syndrome continues, our governance will continue to be  abysmal .The rise of a leader of the moral fibre of  Mahatma Gandhi is awaited to free us from this morass.