(Dr. Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)Rarely can so much media fuss have been made about something so minor as the chorus that has greeted my cleaning up, on Saturday, of a beach at Vizhinjam in my constituency, Thiruvananthapuram.
Amid all the noise I've been hearing, a few simple clarifications seem to be in order.
As I've repeatedly pointed out, I don't see this as a political exercise by the BJP, but as a national mission - first prioritized by Mahatma Gandhi, instituted by Jawaharlal Nehru and pursued, under different names, by every government since - which has been given new impetus and visibility by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
When he invited me, without prior warning, to support his effort, I felt it obvious that I should accept. While the media has described this as my climbing aboard the Modi bandwagon, I see it as the action of a patriotic Indian citizen responding to the call and doing his duty to the nation.
I am bit dismayed to see my actions portrayed as those of a political naif who has been "duped" by a "publicity stunt". Various distinguished Indians, including a Rajya Sabha member and national icon nominated by my party, and a Congress Chief Minister as well as others, have done their bit of cleaning. Are they all merely complicit in a canny politician's publicity stunt, or do they see themselves as providing a useful service and setting an example to their fellow Indians?
Strikingly, I was joined in my cleaning by the local Congress councillor, the political leadership of the Congress Party from the area (including the "Mandalam President" and the "Block President"), and a large number of local residents and youth, as well the President and Secretary of the local Jama'ath (the area is predominantly Muslim). These are the last people to play along with a purely BJP-driven political exercise. As local residents who have to wake up to the dirt and waste around them, they have a stake in the cleanliness of their area, not in a publicity stunt.
Vizhinjam is a beautiful area on the Arabian Sea, blessed by nature. As the poet wrote, "every prospect pleases, and only man [or man's waste] is vile." I have worked with the Central Government in the UPA days to bring various development projects to Vizhinjam: a lighthouse beautification scheme (for 2 crores), tourist infrastructure development of Samudra Beach and Lighthouse Beach (Rs 9 cores), and slum removal and rebuilding of 300 dwelling units under the Rajiv Awas Yojana (Rs 77crores). In addition, the impending construction of a major port is likely to give a major economic boost to the area. But tourists are hardly going to want to come to a dirty beach full of garbage. Cleaning up the Vizhinjam beach will help both the locals and the tourists.
Even more important, I have stressed from the very beginning that I don't believe in photo-ops, and that I am not interested in an exercise that involves a few prominent VIPs wielding a broom for five minutes and never touching one again till the next Gandhi Jayanti. So while doing a thorough cleaning of a filthy beach - which entailed my personally clearing plastic, paper waste, assorted debris and even a dead rat - I also announced the donation of a bio-gas plant to Vizhinjam ward, which would process a tonne of waste a day and give the local residents another place to bring their garbage, rather than to throw it on the beach. Long-term waste management plans are vital to take the idea of a Clean India beyond photo ops.
Nor did I discover the environment only through Mr Modi's aegis. I have been writing and speaking about it since my United Nations days. In fact, one of my essays, first published in 2005, about the lack of civic responsibility for public cleanliness in our culture ("The Bond That Threatens"), has been included in Kerala's high school English textbooks since 2008. No one is going to argue convincingly that participating in a cleanliness drive is inconsistent in any way with my long held and publicly-expressed beliefs. Swachh, to me, doesn't involve any Switch.
At the same time, in uploading a video of the drive and its results, I called upon the Prime Minister to take his idea of "Swachh Bharat" beyond broom-wielding to the large-scale, challenging and expensive projects that require Central Government resources to execute. In my constituency flowed the Parvathy Puthenaar Canal, once the lifeblood of the city; boats used to ply on it, people drank its water, kids swam in it. Today it is an open sewer, choked with garbage and muck, as the sewage from houses on both sides flows into the canal and locals toss their waste into it.
A serious project for its revival will require not merely the huge task of cleaning out the filth, but the construction of alternative underground sewage systems for the residents on either side of the canal, and the injection of fresh water to flush out the canal and restore it to being a living water body.
This would cost hundreds of crores, but it would be an extraordinary transformation that makes the idea of Swachh Bharat a reality for lakhs of people in Thiruvananthapuram.
Having called upon the local MP to do his bit, I think it's fair to ask: is the Prime Minister now prepared to do his?
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