Vying for 'clean' tag

I had forgotten that alongside cleanliness, lethargy too was in the psyche of Mysuru.

The taxi driver who ferried me from the airport to the hotel in Chandigarh in January was very proud of his city. “See,madam, how well planned my city is,” he said, showing me the well-lit shopping arcades as we travelled on the paved, geometrical roads of Chandigarh. I nodded in agreement thinking of the pot-holed roads and rubble-strewn pavements of Bengaluru. But my hackles rose when he went on to say that Chandigarh was the cleanest city in India. “Of course not!” I interjected. “Mysuru has got the ‘cleanest city’ title continuously for two years now,” I said. He was quiet for a minute. “We will beat Mysuru this time, you will see,” he said.

Last month, my daughter in Indore rang up to say that her city was being cleaned up at breakneck speed. The roads were being swept every night, the garbage collected regularly and hauled away, and even dried leaves under the trees were being sucked away by modern machinery. I told her about Mysuru where the inhabitants themselves swept and cleaned the road in front of their houses, and the tender coconut vendors who collected the husks of the coconuts they sold and cleaned up the place before they left in the evening; I boasted that cleanliness was in the psyche of the city. I had forgotten that lethargy was also in the psyche of Mysuru. Despite the urging by local papers, most of the citizens did not respond and vote for their city.

My friend in Visakhapatnam was not greatly impressed with their civic body’s cleaning efforts. “I don’t know where they dump all that garbage!” she remarked ominously, but still voted for the city. With its naval connections, Visakhapatnam had always been one of the cleaner cities, although the weather there makes every job an arduous task.

My Bengali friends were vociferous in saying that Kolkata had become very clean of late. The main roads were washed daily with Ganga water at dawn, they said, which was not done in any other city. I remembered the Mysuru of my childhood, when the arterial roads were washed everyday with Cauvery water. Now, people there have limited supply of water even to drink. I was, however, eager to visit Kolkata and see the improvement myself. Last December, I had to halt at Kolkata on my way to the Sundarbans. I roamed the streets of the ‘City of Joy’ for a whole day and found it minimally better than before.

The list of the cleanest cities in India has been announced finally, and all Mysureans are feeling disappointed, nay disheartened. From the number one position, the city has slipped to the fifth position. Good strategy, besides modern cleaning practices has won Indore the coveted first position this time. The college students were urged to vote for their city, which they did en masse and enthusiastically. The silver lining is that citizens are taking pride in their cities.