Floods, Cracks & Sinkholes: Is India Ready To Fix Its Urban Future? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypnO3XTF_Ms CNN-News18
Flooded roads, mounds of garbage, potholes, traffic chaos, crippling infrastructure - Every Monsoon, Same Story. But this time, Lucknow, a city that was once known for its filth and scattered garbage is now ranked three in Swachh Survekshan. Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai have also topped the list. Which brings us to this question - what are India's urban priorities? What went right in these cities and can other metros follow?
YT transcript: Lucknow, a city that was once known for its filth and scattered garbage is now ranked third in the country in the Swachsarvikshan. credit goes IAS officer Indrajit Singh.
garbage dumps became public parks, waste of fuel plants came up and even the dirtiest stretches of the city saw systematic cleanups. His approach involved communities, built accountability and proved that big city cleanups are just inconvenient for those who benefit from the mess.
But there's also a Mumbai, a Gurugram and a Bengaluru cities drowning in their own waste literally and figuratively.
what are India's urban priorities?
Advaita Kala
Lucknow is being seen as a splendid model owing to how bureaucrats are really going ahead with
this last-ditch effort.
gurugrama we are seeing just this kind of disrepair all around us and i think citizens have had
enough. this is a tax-paying city it's mostly corporates employees we all pay our taxes the least we expect is decent roads and garbage being cleared up
there's just such little regard for basic safety and cleanliness. And all this kind of, you know, the skyscrapers and fancy shopping malls and dining places,
delhi has the same issue with pollution
Mumbai has the issue with rains where it's that same thing right citizens when
that season happens are frustrated and there's that same question we ask
when is this going to end
almost like clockwork you know
Fidelites with AQI every time November hits
So you're heading into AQI Yeah when is this going to end
I just want to ask you Where do you see the issue
Because I know that sometimes it gets quite philosophical
On Twitter at least
many ask is this a problem of citizens not demanding more
or you know is this
a problem of the government the government here
is clearly you know
different government Sarah may be clearly not doing their part but is it
citizens also who need to protest in a
different way what do you think when the bucks when some say the buck should
stop its citizens
oh you know i don't necessarily think the buck should stop its citizens
but we have to be active
stakeholders in this issue and
And that, unfortunately, doesn't happen because part of it is also
because we have jobs,
we have regular lives, we have other priorities.
We can't be kind of, you know, butting heads over garbage pickup and,
you know,
potholes look at bangalore and the potholes again another such
a progressive city if you speak if
you have a friend in bangalore you know you call
them they're always in traffic yeah so they make
great phone conversations because they have all the time to be on
the phone but it's because they're always in traffic so it's it's you know it's
like a malaise
and I must bring up Lucknow at this point when you speak
about citizenship engagement
They have actually reached out to four crore citizens, outreaches, specific,
targeted, saying that, you know, get involved, support us, help us,
you know, get to these benchmarks that I mean, it's
incredible to go up to rank four in a year's time is a compliment of course
to the IES officer and also to the government and the chief minister you
know it's and the citizens of Lucknow so it
It just goes to show that you need government,
you need bureaucracy and you need the citizens
to come together and say that we're going to make a change.
And Lucknow doing it is I think a huge example
for the rest of
us that it can happen you're not just you know stuck in a certain way
of being the only
philosophical thing about this is that we just assume
that this is karma this is destiny and
this is the way we're going to live our lives yeah you know that's about
it so don't settle for what's coming your way try
and make a change and that's exactly what
the is officer attempted to do in luck now two years he's brought up
the rankings to
four which no one saw coming advaita you briefly spoke
about it how this needs to be a collective effort doesn't stop
at the government alone doesn't stop
at individuals alone or the society at large it has to be each and every person
contributing
to make a change but how do you how do
you bring in that inspiration how do you bring in that kind of motivation for a set
of people like you said who are just bothered with their own individual lives they're
all stuck in nine to fives or are struggling to meet their ends what
do you do apart from just spreading awareness I think it's
against citizen engagement it's really
important you know I remember in school on 2nd October we used to all clean
the premises I don't
know if it happened in your schools
also nowhere used to clean everything and it became like an annual routine
but it was just
that one day in the year and we have to kind
of build a culture wherein it starts from school
children and childhood wherein you have pride for
your surroundings not just in your inside your home
and you can keep your room clean and don't
litter the drawing room but even outside your home i mean so many times
and i'm sure you've
experienced this as well i've been outside uh you
know behind a car worth crores and the passenger will chuck open the window
on the road yeah open
the window and chuck garbage in the road and i'm like you know
if affluent educated people are
behaving like this then what
hope do we have for anyone else right so this is there's
a there's a certain amount of you know uh
casual casualness when it comes to this and and you will go if you go to gurgaon
and if you look
inside the posh colonies of gurgaon it's like living in a western country manicured lawns
clean pavements excellent lighting so when it is done for yourself in
your colony and your rwa gets active and if a light bulb is out the whatsapp
group will
be lit with all kinds of messages and fire and fury but we won't do it if
uh the main road outside our
house is facing similar circumstances.
So it's even us and it's also you know getting to a point
now where I think people are going to say let's privatize this if the government
is not able to
handle it. And really getting to that
stage because people have just had it but again we need to be more active I love
that you brought up
the privatization point because that in the last few years has
become a very big part of the discourse
can we ask you Advaita, you were talking a little bit earlier
about pride and on the show a few days ago we had someone who worked
in the north east on a clean up drive in a region in Meghalay and he was saying
that in that region to your point of pride it was actually about
pride so anyone who lived in that region didn't pollute
because they believed the land was land of no sin and because they believe
that there was an inherent sense of we do not pollute and he was talking
about the need to inculcate that sense of ownership and
pride in all of us. So I just want to ask you
Advaita because we can ask you this what do you do to make sure the people
around you whether it is your kids if you have
kids, younger people around you
actually have that sense of this is my city
because it can sound
quite naggy that's the unfortunate part so how do you build that message send
that message out besides I think that that isn't that whole factor really
getting lost especially given how people are moving on the move constantly
So Gurugram for instance has people from across the country,
so that whole idea of belonging to one place is also slowly
in the NCR at least.
Yeah, I mean you know first link it to property prices,
the moment you do
that that your property's price will go down if you live
in a dump yard i think that will impact
people because you know unfortunately people have to see some some kind
of personal benefit or
problem if they continue to
exist in certain way that's just the way human beings are wired so i think
you know they can be assessed or
there can be a you know an increase in property or a decrease
in property prices i don't know how
you regulate these things but i'm just trying to think out of the
box that it needs to be you know impacted in some way where it hits your bottom
your personal
bottom line uh that's one thing the other thing is
you know i've been to indore a couple of times
and uh and people there are so
proud one of the first things that they'll tell you when you get there
they'll tell you oh do you know this is the cleanest city in india and then if
you look around and you notice it or if you mention it they can have
a whole conversation
with you about it i
I suspect, you know, Lucknow as well, now that it's climbed up the ranks
and it's at number four for over one million inhabitants
and their competition is Bhopal, another beautiful city and Ahmedabad,
you'll see the
people of Lucknow actually feel take pride in this and say,
we've got to beat this number.
And then it becomes a collective movement.
So I think a big part of it is normalizing it.
What we've instead done is that
we've normalized chucking things on the ground uh you know uh not taking care
of our surroundings
and waiting for the dmc or ndmc someone to come pick it
up we've normalized that
on the other hand we have to take something
out of the textbook of Indore, Lucknow now.
I think Lucknow is the most encouraging because it's the most recent
and surprising entry into this list
which just makes us feel like it's possible with the right effort and
initiative and we need to normalize cleanliness.
We need to be able to look at it as an aberration
and bad behavior when someone litters instead what we do is we just look the other
way and the change makers who are actually attempting to do something
about it are also
being looked down upon we had a voice advaita very recently
on the show someone who's leading
this movement in the himalayas picking up trash as he keeps
trekking but he says that when I do tell what I what I'm
actually doing to my family friends
you know anyone back home they still look at me as a garbage picker so that's the mentality
that one's fighting really so
So despite these change-makers, there is a huge problem of waste management.
How do you go about it? Advaita, in your personal experience,
do you think there's also lack of basic practices that we can ensure?
For instance, waste segregation that should begin from our
homes how many of us separate wet waste from dry waste to begin
with yeah we don't we don't at all
and i'm from utarakhand you know so so i know exactly about the kind
of littering uh tourists
do you know and these and they come in and and they leave and it's it's
like a tsunami of garbage
is left behind i mean everyone talks about oh the lovely maggie
in the mountains guess what
happens to those packets of baggie noodles they're scattered all
over the mountainside
i mean you have landfills developing overnight so it's it's a terrible terrible situation
And I think that we have to get very aggressive about this and not for anything else,
but we've just come out of a pandemic.
We know the kind of hell an epidemic, a pandemic can cause.
And the primary cause is exactly the circumstances we're in right now,
which is garbage being left around, which is rain, stagnation.
Delhi is going to head into now AQI issues.
So it's like you're battling one thing and the
other and the ease of living index people talk
about that all the time it's quite the buzzword
but the bottom line is the ease of living is really ensuring that you live
in a clean healthy
environment that doesn't send your stress levels off the
roof which is what is happening people are getting stressed
out they're having heart ailments i
mean we just don't realize the peripherals that are connected with this we only look
at it from an
aesthetic point of view the aesthetic
point of view is just the surface and it's only the beginning.
It's what we can see. We don't know
what we're breathing in, how it's impacting our mental health,
our body, our physicality.
I I mean, it's just one after the other.
I mean, today in any of our big cities,
we can't even go out and take a walk
and feel like we're doing something healthy for ourselves.
Right. And when there is a little bit
of clean air like there has been in delhi right now because
of the rain you have citizens really
you know coming out and thanking it because it is rare unfortunately so
and then they get stuck yeah
there's a different challenge that they have to face in terms of potholes
in terms of water logging so getting stuck in traffic like Delhi still
and I mean I've grown up in Delhi 30 years ago it was still Minto Bridge today also
we're still looking at Minto Bridge has it flooded has I mean it's
absurd the world has progressed we didn't have internet 30 years ago
but we still have Minto Bridge you know yeah yeah okay Advaita