INDIAN SMELL - RAILWAY STATIONS, INTERNAL ROAD SIDES IN CITIES Etc

Recently,  the One who have travelled the maximum number of countries in the world, fortunately an Indian, said in a t.v. transmission about the foul smell that receive us in most of the railway stations in India. Unfortunately, no corrective action is being taken to subside this. In fact this foul smell can be found wherever public urinals/toilets are installed. It may be quite surprising that neither our people not our our governments are taking any corrective measures in this. Let us know the fact our government is loosing considerable amount of foreign money owing to this reason too. For instance, India is a country with large geographical, historical and religious resources to attract tourists from all over the world.  But for our own reasons we fail in this. While the international tourism receipts in 2024 of USA was $215 billion, during the same period Indian receipt was $35 to ,$36 billion. If we look for this huge variation cleanliness too may be a considerable cause.

According to Environmental Performance Index (2024 - 2026) the top five cleanest countries in the world are given below. 1. Estonia, 2. Luxembourg. 3. Germany. ,4. Finland and  5. U.K. India ranks 176 out 180 countries with a score of 27.6 while the score of the top country was 75.7. This ranking list shows how clean we are in the world. Taking bath twice in a day and wearing clean and attractive dresses alone does not make one clean, but he has to ensure that his environment too to be kept clean.

According to available information,  the latest annual budget  of India has a provision of Rs 12,192 crore primarily centered around the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Further to this the total outlay approved for the Namami Ganga Program for the period 2021-2026 for the cleaning of Ganga river was Rs 22,500/- crores.Over and above these there is a budget allocation of Rs 3,759.46 crores for the cleaning of the polluted atmosphere and other related aspects.

We must now ask ourselves that whether these allocation and the subsequent activities bring the desired results. If we walk through the railway stations, busy public placed etc, the answer may be a straight 'no'. Being a common man of this country, having extensively travelled through the great land I would like to suggest the following for enhancing the cleanliness all over India. The railway may redesign the urinals/toilets of the whole railway stations in India with perfect design to prevent the foul smell and also with proper arrangement to clean these at the required number of times every day. Let every state have their own uniform design for these buildings. Similar arrangementd should be provided by all concerned in bus stands, taxi stands, market places, shopping complexes, educational institutions, hospitals, religious places where good gathering takes place and all such necessary places. Necessity of cleanliness in every walk of life should be added in the school syllabus from class 4 to class 12, so that the future generation shall also concentrate in this matter.

K V George