Select City Walk and DLF shopping malls in south Delhi’s Saket; Atta Market, Film City, NCR Noida, the Pacific Mall and NCR Ghaziabad, are all symbols of a new India, with deep pockets. Going by the cars, watches, clothes and mobiles, the average monthly income of people visiting these places would be fairly substantial.

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The New Delhi railway station is a place where the upper classes, with their trolley bags and branded clothes, have to literally wade through the labyrinths created by squatters to reach the trains. 

While waiting for trains, low-income people create mini-eatries and restrooms on the platforms -- they spread bed sheets on the floor, use bags as pillows and feast on packed food, before having a good mouth wash right there. 

Come to Fleet Street and Gandhi Peace Foundation, which touch Lutyen’s Delhi, and move to Vasant Kunj in south or Mayur Vihar in east Delhi, these residential colonies are brimming with India’s intellectual elite. 

Across the boundaries of income and education, comes the great leveller: The smell of broken or non-existent drains, open toilets and nullahs, on which are built world class malls. 

While development experts have learnt to put sewage drains out of sight at many places in the capital, it is very difficult to block out the stench. 

To anyone with a slight sense of hygiene and average powers of smelling, these shopping malls with their glitzy showrooms and eateries represent a nightmare. However, a majority of the people here seem merrily unmindful of the unpleasant sights and smells.  

Hygiene, as the science of the term suggests, with hand hygiene being its core, is the missing link in the lives of most Indians, the rosy statistics about the production of toilet paper, soaps and hand-sanitisers notwithstanding. 

According to a recent article in Tissue World magazine, the tissue paper market in India has been growing at 20 to 25 percent annually, and Allied Market Research group predicts India’s disposable glove market to grow at 12 percent a year until 2025. 

Higher production and consumption of such items do not, however, mean an automatic rise in hygiene consciousness. An airport food vendor might promptly wear gloves if you point to the sweat on his/her hands, but ruins it nonetheless by handling your food and dirty currency notes with the same gloved hand. The increasing use of gloves, hair caps, hand-sanitisers and tissue paper is, at best, cosmetic, and at worst, wasteful.

There are other alarming indicators about the absence of hygiene consciousness, especially among the young. The same hands that work feverishly on the laptop and phone or run nervously through the hair one moment, are stuffing food in the mouth the next. 

Think about it. These are the future parents. With such a careless attitude to such vital aspects of health, they won’t need a toilet converted into a kitchen to jeopardise the health of their children!  

Hygiene is not just about the physical boundaries between the kitchen and the toilet; it is a science that requires deep study and awareness of the self and its surroundings. 

Since nobody has the time or mind for this, the next best thing is to follow the rules set in your homes.  

Once upon a time, when blackberry and apple were fruits, not status symbols, the mother and grandmother were the unschooled doctor and scientist at home. They never entered the kitchen without a bath and their hair tied up neatly;  they looked upon grown nails and cleanliness as enemies, taught their children never to trim nails and comb hair near the kitchen, to keep the shoes in the rack at the house entrance and not to touch food without washing their hands. 

Today, we need the World Health Organisation (WHO) to tell us about the importance of hand hygiene. ‘World Hand-washing Day’ is, indeed, an embarrassing reminder about where we stand in terms of hygiene. 

And, not with all the compelling petitions by first-class activists to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the Supreme Court can you get  the mountains of garbage in the national capital removed, whether on Karnal road or National Highway 24. 

Author is a senior journalist