Editorial 1 : If Citizens Take Ownership
Context: Swachh Bharat Mission will be sustainable only when citizens take ownership
Introduction: Broken Windows Theory
- According to this theory introduced in the early 1980s by social scientists James Q Wilson and George L Kelling, a single broken window can crack the foundation of a neighbourhood.
- It suggests that visible signs of disorder and neglect, such as broken windows, graffiti or litter, can encourage further crime and anti-social behaviour in a community.
Effect of Environment on Human Consciousness
- Countless social experiments prove that our surroundings can influence our behaviour.
- These may include physical stimuli, symbols, formal and informal communications, behavioural recommendations and social demonstrations of acceptable behaviour.
- Therefore, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), is laying a great deal of emphasis on visible cleanliness along with construction of toilets, and management of solid and liquid waste.
- By ensuring visible cleanliness, it creates a conducive environment for people to stop littering.
- Example: Under the SBM, Karaikal Municipal Corporation, Puducherry, tapped into the traditional art of making Kolams to transform garbage vulnerable points (GVPs).
Challenges
- The Question of Sustainability
- A GVP once cleaned, will not remain clean. Sooner or later someone will dump their garbage on the street, and others will follow suit.
- The most well-executed government initiatives fizzle out if an inherent component of operations and maintenance is not incorporated in programme design.
- When compounded with the challenges of long-term behaviour transformation, the problem becomes grimmer.
Solution: Collective Action Approach
- A collective action approach that shifts the onus of keeping the villages and mohallas clean, from the government to the citizens works effectively in ensuring cleanliness.
- Example: The collective-action approach was successfully demonstrated in the Light House Initiative (LHI), a public-private partnership programme that is supporting the Swachh Bharat Mission.
- Led by the India Sanitation Coalition, at the behest of the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Drinking Water and Sanitation, the programme leveraged the techno-managerial strength of corporates to design a programme that focused on O&M (operation and management) using community action.
- Communities were involved in the entire waste cycle.
Way Forward
- It is critical to look at O&M funding to ensure the running and maintenance of community assets like public toilets and FSTPs. Otherwise, infrastructure falls to disuse.
- Beautiful community toilets stay locked as there is no budget or incentive to keep them clean.
- We need to provide O&M budgets as part of every such built structure.
- This can create jobs for maintaining these assets, help in skilling these operators and create entrepreneurs who can run these for a profit by charging for services.
Conclusion: Community collective action works because it harnesses the power of collaboration, shared responsibility, and social capital to address common challenges and improve overall well-being. Being part of a group generates social pressure for individuals to contribute to the community’s efforts.
Editorial 2 : Some Material Questions
Context: How to build a people-centric Viksit Bharat
Introduction: Prime Minister gave the dream of Viksit Bharat by 2047. This is not just limited to GDP but also about the provision of basic amenities and decent jobs for people.
Structure of Polity
- India’s political structure formally, even constitutionally, is layered with a national superstructure and largely subservient state structures.
- There is a concentration of political power at the Centre in Delhi, and within that, the PM’s office.
- This power is operated by the IAS and supported by a constellation of elite institutions such as the IITs and scientific agencies such as the IMD.
- These regulate most scientific standards and processes from food safety to forest fires.
- There is little formal accountability of the executive to the legislature.
- The above structure is replicated at the state level, where Chief Minister’s office is the power centre.
- People must mobilise on the streets or operate media for attention.
- The scientific and political culture, freedom of expression and the presence of independent media change from state to state. This explains, to a large extent, the divergence in development outcomes.
On the Economy Front
- In India there is a national economy and various subsidiary regional economies.
- There is immense concentration of wealth in the hands of about 100 pan-national business families.
- These business houses have flourished, generally, at the cost of regional businesses and industries.
- At the household level, the top 20% have 80 per cent of the wealth.
- The rest constitutes the informal sector and much of it serves the top 20% in low-paying jobs.
We the People: Citizens
- A functional democracy requires the people to ask material questions as citizens and then make choices.
- But during elections, media offers a range of emotive issues and personality politics and people too seem happy to receive dole than demand better public services.
- Situation of Youth
- High school students cannot measure time or length and graduates cannot write a first-person account or operate a spreadsheet.
- Intellectual aspirations of the youth are culminating in sitting for competitive exams.
- There is a veritable collapse of the intellectual capacities of the people.
Some Basic Material Questions (BMQs) and their Answers
- A citizen may ask: Why is my bus late?
- Buses are late because roads are bad, and bus maintenance is poor.
- At the bus depot, there is little capacity to analyse traffic and delay data or funds to hire a local consultant.
- A farmer may ask: Where is my groundwater?
- Central Ground Water Board formulate rules for groundwater use. Neither it, nor the state agencies, have the scientific heft or the empirical data to do this.
Way Forward
- For a Viksit Bharat by 2047, much of the political structure needs an overhaul.
- We must connect our problems with useful knowledge creation and eventually, new jobs and professions.
- Youth must be brought to the forefront of this process and create opportunities to engage with society.
- Scientists and professors must develop a theory of change and a science of comprehension and participation.
- Bureaucracy must become more local, more responsive and accountable.
Conclusion: The last two decades have shown us that excessive centralisation and old social arrangements are at the root of many problems. India is just too complex and diverse to be ruled from Delhi.