Has PM Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat Mission got off to the right start?

Forty-six years and one day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the Swachh Bharat Mission on October 2, 2014 — the 145th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi — Lee Kuan Yew had done something similar in Singapore. On October 1, 1968, a little over three years after Singapore became an independent republic, prime minister Lee launched the government’s first nationwide public education programme, dubbed The Keep Singapore Clean Campaign. The aim of the month-long mission: to make Singapore the cleanest and greenest city in the region by tackling its bane of littering in public places. A month, of course, is hardly enough for large-scale change of any kind. Not even a year. Nor a decade. To be sure, the initial success emboldened Singapore to follow up with a series of campaigns over the decades — from Use Your Hands and Keep the Toilets Clean to a Clean and Green Week in the 1990s.

In 2018, a year before the Swachh Bharat Mission hopes to eradicate open defecation — 2019 is also the year of General Election — it would be 50 years of The Keep Singapore Clean Campaign. As of today, close to five decades of sustained efforts, including stiff penalties and strict enforcement, public education and community engagement, have gone a long way in helping Singapore battle the scourge of litter — a war that it, however, still can’t claim to have won as it still deals with cigarette butts, used tissue, food and drink containers and assorted packaging. But if Singapore is today known for its by and large clean environment, the initial efforts of Lee would have to be acknowledged.





Now Singapore can hardly be compared with India — it is roughly 4,700 times smaller, its population stands at under 6 million vis-a-vis India’s 1.2 billion-plus, and a study by The Economist suggested that Singapore’s GDP is most comparable to Maharashtra’s. The similarity, though, is that Modi and India today may be where Lee and Singapore were in the late ’60s (previous governments did kick off several cleanliness campaigns, but never perhaps with such intent, pomp and hype).



As the story on Sikkim’s quest for cleanliness and happiness shows, success takes its time in coming, but it inevitably does come. As long as the strategy is right, along with execution and purpose. A beginning has been made, but the harder work comes now. A Swachh Bharat would also mean a country free of corrupt practices — which is perhaps an even bigger pipe dream than a litterfree India. Once toilets are built, it’s time to get people to use them — and even more important to figure out ways to clean them without human intervention. Let’s not forget what the Father of the (Swachh) Nation said: “What is so distressing is that the living quarters of the menials and sweepers employed in the viceroy’s house are extremely dirty.… I shall be satisfied only when the lodgings of the ministers’ staff are as neat and tidy as their own.” Over to October 2.