Comment

“I was driving in the Delhi rush hour when I noticed this BMW in front of me.” The speaker was a wan Englishwoman who is the India correspondent for a prominent English daily. “At a traffic light the window rolled down and a Coke can came hurtling out.” Then, by her own admission she “lost it”, chased the BMW down and confronted the driver. The richie rich young man couldn’t understand her rage. “But the can was empty!” he said.

Obviously, she was new to Delhi. A young single woman taking on a young man in the macho North takes foolhardy courage. And to do that for a ‘crime’ like littering is like tilting at windmills. “But if people like him behave like this,” she said, “what hope is there for a clean city?”

What indeed? Mumbai’s problems, as we all know, is primarily because of over crowding. Besides that, a large proportion of its population is made up of immigrant labour which has no sense of belonging to the city. Most importantly, a huge number of people — in fact, the majority of the population — lives in slums.

If we look objectively, there has been a visible improvement in the cleanliness standards of the city. But that is a drop in the ocean, compared to the job of collecting and disposing of solid waste which forms a large chunk of municipal work. A new set of bye-laws have recently been framed to address this problem. The Municipal Commissioner Johny Joseph circulated these to institutions, NGOs and individuals recently to get their comments.

Titled “Greater Mumbai Cleanliness And Sanitation Bye-laws 2006”, it deals with waste-management of a city of 15 million people who generate 8500 tonnes of solid waste per day. The preamble lists the initiatives taken so far to maintain cleanliness in Mumbai including new waste-processing plants and sanitary land-fill, introduction of area cleansing programmes and the expansion of the Dattak Vasti Yojna for maintaining cleanliness of slum localities.

It then admits that these measures have not been enough. Firstly because the infrastructure needs a great deal of improvement and secondly a far greater involvement of Mumbai citizens is necessary. For improving infrastructure, the present mechanical sweeping of arterial roads will be extended, close transporters as well as a new range of waste compactors will be introduced and the current community bins will be replaced by ‘cow-proof’ bins so that there is no spillage as at present. NGOs who work with rag-pickers have also been roped in. Lastly the whole effort will be made more visible by introducing a colour coded scheme for vehicles and uniforms which will sport the slogan Kar Dikhayenge, Mumbai Saaf Karenge.

But these bye-laws go much further by going beyond public awareness to enforcement of public cleanliness. To start with the corporation will introduce Six Degrees of Separation of Waste. (Actually they call it segregation, but doesn’t separation sound better?) This replaces the present two levels but the categories Biodegradable, Hazardous, Bio medical, Construction, Bulk Garden and Dry Waste make eminent sense. Once the bye-laws come into effect, separation becomes mandatory.

The bye-laws also introduce hefty fines for offences like spitting, bathing, urinating and defecating publicly and even washing vehicles or utensils/clothes on the streets.
How do you enforce rules like these in a city where so many people live on pavements? RA Rajeev, Additional Municipal Commissioner (City), whose brainchild this scheme is, is quite forthright on this subject. They will go soft on slum and pavement dwellers when they need to, but when roads like PD’Mello Road and Senapati Bapat Marg are cleared of encroachments, should they not ensure that they are no longer used as public toilets?

Shouldn’t visible garbage be controlled for shops and hawkers? Most importantly, shouldn’t people know that they can no longer treat the city as their personal urinal? In the west too, you don’t find public toilets at every corner, yet people do not squat on the streets. It’s a culture you have to inculcate and the bye-laws are the first steps in initiating it.

The Corporation will enforce these habits by increasing the present strength of 80 ‘Nuisance Collectors’ to 500. And oh yes, they will be called Safai Rakshaks.
So you have been warned. A beginning is being made to make Mumbai if not a Shanghai, at least a clean city. Learn to keep yourself zipped up.