Defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as ‘the things that you do to keep yourself and your surroundings clean in order to maintain good health’, hygiene incidentally includes, apart from ‘cleanliness’, all circumstances and practices, lifestyle issues, premises and commodities that engender a safe and healthy environment. The word is derived from the Greek Goddess of health ‘Hygeia’.
Ill health risks are reduced through hygienic practices, but it also equally affects how we and others perceive ourselves and influence our levels of confidence and self-esteem, affecting many aspects of our lives.
The unclean Indian
Indians are said to have bad hygiene habits. We are famous for spitting, peeing, passing wind, etc., unabashedly in public places. A ranking of countries in respect of the observance of sanitation and hygiene standards would definitely find us close to the bottom.
We keep our homes clean but litter the outside with gay abandon, as if it was not our concern. A blog termed India ‘the world’s biggest dustbin’, a befitting analogy for a nation of litterers. There is reportedly 1.3 lakh tons of waste generated in cities per day and the dimensions are jaw dropping even with the ‘Swachch Bharat’ campaign kicking off.
The general lack of cleanliness and hygiene hits the eye wherever one goes in India. Be it hospitals, hotels, workplaces, railway platforms, trains, etc. We think nothing of spitting, urinating or defecating whenever we like and wherever we choose. Even where toilet facilities are provided, open defecation has become the norm. We live in unliveable surroundings, thanks to our own dirty habits. I block out the disgusting smells that assail the air generally by tying a handkerchief around my nose. Any lapse in concentration while walking and I could easily be stepping in a gooey mess of giant poop! I also watch out for that odd loogie of spit coming out of windows or flying through the air from somewhere. I recall when young, I assumed the red stains on the roads to be blood, till I realised they were betel leaf saliva!
A columnist Indrajit Hazra opines, “India is so dirty because Indians are so clean. Essentially, there’s some theory about the worse your personal hygiene, the better your public cleanliness. This makes no sense at all for us who take a dip in the very public-cum-personal Ganges or local tube well to cleanse our squeaky bits, including our souls”.
Whose job is it anyway?
Let’s accept it. India is dirty because 90% Indians think that cleaning is someone else’s job. At home, it is the maid servant’s job, and outside it is some sweeper’s job and not yours. Everybody thinks that the other person will contribute to cleanliness. And if that fails, you can always blame the municipality and elected representatives.
So basically, it is our attitude which is responsible…the chalta hai (so be it) attitude. People learn about India not through pictures, but through experiences. Unhygienic practices are dreadful to those not used to it. The main problem is the attitude that most Indians suffer from that anything outside one’s home is not home.
Municipal initiatives to provide dustbins in public places are nixed because people, thanks to poverty, steal them without thinking about the consequences. Even when there is a dustbin right before their eyes, we do see people littering. How does then one expect such people to care about public hygiene?
The horrible Bhopal catastrophe or the Kaiga nuclear plant leak has not helped us learn. We continue to rely on hazardous and toxic technologies. Ship breaking, a highly polluting and damaging activity, as also the use of asbestos, banned in several countries for its carcinogenic properties, is welcome here. The United States sends PET bottles all the way to India for recycling and is shipped back. We are the dumping ground.
With billions in population, we possess the labour to clean up the streets. Can criminals perhaps, be put to the task? Pre-emption of corruption in municipalities; ensuring officials who are allotted tasks, will fulfil them; initiating cleanliness drives and levying of hefty fines for littering, would all help a lot.
Cleanliness encompasses basic hygiene, civic sense and public pride. We should however have a realistic expectation of cleanliness, work on ourselves and keep our surroundings as clean as possible. I do not throw away even a chocolate wrapper, but keep it in my pocket till I find a bin. If everyone did that, the whole world would not turn into a garbage bin.
Only when Indians start feeling India is their home too, will they realise that it is their duty to keep the country clean. The need to educate children in schools about health and cleanliness to ensure a future clean India, cannot be overemphasized.
‘Public awareness’ is different from ‘cleanliness’. In a village, excreta increases the fertility of the farm. But in a city, spitting or similar actions are only a nuisance. A person needs proper facilities to empty his wastes, for he cannot be stopped from peeing, just because it may spread disease. Proper toilets at appropriate places are essential. I am all for privatisation to bolster cleanliness.
Sadly, we Indians are upset and angry when any reference is made to public urination, public defecation, dirt, garbage, filth, the poor living on the street; things which we have to accept in order to change the narrative.
The lighter side of life
Now on to lighter stuff. Leonardo DiCaprio, the Hollywood star reportedly refuses to use deodorants or take a bath because of his love for the environment, and “this has killed our love life”, says his girlfriend. He only showers a couple of days a week to conserve water and considers deodorants to be unnatural. Also an avid recycler, he regularly misses the refuse pick-up days allegedly leaving his kitchen with a foul odour from the rubbish.
Robert Pattison allegedly rarely showers and upsets cast and crew of his films as he stinks and reeks on the sets. I have heard about another popular singer Bruce Springsteen, who when asked if he took a bath every two weeks, took affront and insisted that he took it every ten days!
A survey in France showed that only one in 29 people took a shower once a week; one in five did not shower every day though 11.5 per cent of French men and women shower several times daily. Hand washing, too, was not always a priority. One eighth of those questioned said they didn’t bother washing their hands after going to the toilet. More than one in five said they didn’t wash their hands before sitting down for a meal. But they are more aware of hygiene when they are cooking – 86.6 per cent say they always wash their hands before preparing food.
More than half of men quizzed in Britain admitted they regularly skipped their morning shower; with a quarter saying they’d rather have the extra time in bed.
An eighty-year-old Iranian, Haji, who lives in isolation in Dejgah village, in the Southern Iranian province of Fars, believes that “cleanliness brings him sickness.” That’s why he hasn’t bathed at all in the past 60 years!
Nearer home, Kailash Singh 65, can be called the world’s smelliest man – after refusing to wash for more than 37 years. He has not bathed or cut his 6ft-long dreadlocks since 1974, shortly after he married. He claims a priest guaranteed him a much-prized son and heir if he followed the advice. Despite neighbours joking, the sweaty farmer would be lucky if he could persuade his wife to have any children at all. He has seven daughters.
India is so dirty because as someone said, “people prefer to live in that dirty environment than to clean things up and increase the cost of everything around them.” But if Indians are dirty, then let’s remember also that Americans use tissue papers in their toilets even though water is available. Should Indians learn from that?