MUNICIPAL LIFE

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

MUNICIPAL LIFE

 

 

 The fashion that seems now to have become permanent, of presenting prominent Congressmen with addresses by municipalities and local boards has resulted in my coming in touch with the working of municipalities almost all over India. I have come to the conclusion from my observation of so many municipalities that the greatest problem they have to tackle is sanitation. I am aware that it is a stupendous problem. Some of the national habits are bad beyond description, and yet so ingrained as to defy all human effort. Wherever I go this insanitation obtrudes itself upon my gaze in some shape or another. In the Punjab and Sind, in total disregard of the elementary laws of health we dirty our terraces and roofs breeding billions of disease-producing microbes and founding colonies of flies. Down south, we do not hesitate to dirty our streets, and early in the morning, it is impossible for anyone in whom the sense of decency is developed to walk through the streets which are lined with people performing functions of nature which are meant to be performed in seclusion and in spots which human beings need not ordinarily tread.

In Bengal, the same tale in a varying form has to be told; the same pool in which people have washed their dirt, their pots, and in which cattle have drunk, supplies drinking water. And here in Cutch men and women think nothing of repeating the performance I have seen in Madras. These are not ignorant people; they are not illiterate; many have travelled even beyond the borders of India. They ought to know better; but they do not. And nobody worries about giving them an education in the elements of sanitation. It is, or should be, one of the privileges of municipalities and local boards to make it their chief concern to eradicate insanitation within their limits. If we are to live in cities, if we are to live an organized life, if we are to grow in health and wisdom we shall have to get rid of insanitation some day or other. The sooner we do so the better.

Let us not postpone everything till swaraj is attained. Some things no doubt will only be done when that much-wished-for event has happened. But it will never happen if we do not do the many things which can be done today as easily as under swaraj, and which are signs of corporate and civilized national life. No institution can handle this problem better and more speedily than our municipalities. They have, so far as I am aware, all the powers they need in this direction and they can get more, if necessary.

Only the will is often wanting. It is not recognized that a municipality does not deserve to exist which does not possess model closets and where streets and lanes are not scrupulously clean all the hours of the day and the night. But the reform cannot be brought about without infinite application on the part of members of municipalities and local boards. To think of all the municipalities in the aggregate and to wait till everyone has begun the work is indefinitely to postpone the reform. Let those who have got the will and the ability commence the reform in right earnest now, and the rest will follow. It is with this end in view that I reproduce elsewhere a translation of a humorously written letter by Dr. Hariprasad Desai of Ahmadabad and published recently in Navajivan.

The Municipality of Ahmadabad had taken up the problem seriously. Ahmadabad is an exceptionally difficult town to deal with from the sanitary standpoint.

It is unclear. I have not seen a more unclean city. Its polls are seething with stench and dirt. The superstitions and prejudices to be overcome are immense. Insanitation has acquired an almost religious sanction. Even the doctrine of ahimsa is invoked in favour of dirty habits! I invite the reader to carefully peruse the translation. He will then appreciate the difficulties that face the reformer in Ahmadabad. Not many volunteers are to be had for this thankless and difficult work. The reader will note too that it is being done by the commissioners who are interested in making Ahmadabad a model city in point of sanitation. They are doing their work outside office hours and partly as a labour of love. No municipality need expect any brilliant result if it is to be satisfied with mere routine work, issuing instructions to its executive officer. Every municipal commissioner will have to become a self-constituted scavenger in the city under his care if the cities of India are to become fit to live in for the poorest people in a decent sanitary condition.