Swachh Bharat: A Dream or Reality

Room No. 3, Advaitananda Bhavana, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur, 1991: Gifted a broom by one of the hostel seniors to clean it in 10 minutes. No, it was not ragging. it was my first brush with what people call Swachh Bharat Abhiyan nowadays.

Charity begins at home. So cleanliness should also begin at home. Yes that was the mantra we learnt when I was in the first year of my long hostel life in school. And, learning came with reward also. Every Sunday night, the "best room" award used to be announced in which the roommates of the best clean room were given a lozenge each. 

Besides the "best room" contest, we also shared our duties every week to keep our campus clean. I vividly remember one of our friends, the son of a wealthy businessman of the city then, was given the duty of surrounding cleaning. As the tell-tale name suggests, the boy — with long broom in hand like what we see celebrities use for photo-ops these days — was supposed to clean the hostel surroundings along with five of his friends. He was not very keen and our warden just used the broomstick on the kid's back several times to make cleanliness, and responsibility, a habit! Such was our grooming unlike millions of Indians outside the 15ft wall around us. 

Department of English and Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, March 10, 2000: We took up brooms as our collective responsibility towards cleaning the department. It has been a decades-old tradition in Santiniketan when its founder Rabindranath Tagore began cleaning the ashram in honour of none other than Mahatma Gandhi, who was a visitor to Gurudev's abode of peace. Even today, ashramites gather in their respective places for a mass cleaning exercise on March 10, christened "Gandhi Punyah" by Tagore himself.

Gandhi's influence on people — from Tagore to Narendra Modi — seems immense so far as cleanliness is concerned. Even 10 years ago, I saw several posters on railway stations with Gandhi's message: Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Nowadays, even railway officials hardly try to pass on this message to either the passengers or the junior officers. Time has changed but not the indiscipline attitude of people towards cleaning their surroundings. Which "ness" is to be blamed for that — awareness, laziness, carelessness, callousness, fearlessness of law or obliviousness to our values?

I feel angry to watch people spit on the streets and litter around roads. Do they behave at home like this? Do we need a Prime Minister to cane around us to teach us about cleanliness? Do we need a Bharat Ratna cricketer to record a video of broom in hand to teach us what cleanliness is all about? 
Most probably, yes. 

Durga Puja: few words — II

Blame it on bogus Bollywood numbers or give a million thanks to sesquicentenary celebrations of Tagore. But this time, it's bye-bye Bollywood, welcome Bangla, again on loudspeakers. This is probably the most welcome change of Puja 2011.

Maybe it's one of the better years in Bengali film industry, popularly known as Tollywood, too, after the golden days of the 1960s and '70s. Along with Tagore, Tollywood has a good role to play in shaping the culture of Bengal. In the recent past, it's hardly seen to find four-five big-budget Tollywood release in the run-up to the Puja. But 2011 is different. The mood set by Autograph last year has just been taken over by a series of films that drew film-buffs back to theatres. Multiplexes in Kolkata, once only beaming Bollywood flicks, have now started screening more than one Bengali film this festive season. This is a sea change in terms of viewership vis-a-vis business. Songs from Bengali films like Ichhe or Baishe Shravan are now being played across the city in the past few days — something unimaginable even five years ago.

Bollywood films were quite a few in numbers this year though runaway hits could be confined to only a few or at least those have not arrived on loudspeakers in localities dotted with Durga Puja pandals. Songs from Bodyguard, a superhit Salman Khan movie released on Eid like last year's Dabangg, were only heard being played on FM channels! After four days of the Puja since Sunday, one can easily find that Bengali songs — mostly Rabindrasangeet — are on the loudspeakers that used to blare "Munni Badnam Hui" last year. I don't know whether we, Bengalis, are still obsessed with Tagore or not, but a little push from our chief minister for the bard's 150th year birth anniversary has seen many a "parar dada" paying obeisance to Rabindranath this Puja. We know our chief minister's obsession (or, OCD) with Tagore songs at traffic signals and railway stations. The best part is people are largely inspired by her thoughts with those of Tagore's being lost into the oblivion!

Marketing Tagore

Every race or community has its own history and culture. For us, Bengalis, it starts and ends with him! He is often rightly termed the last Renaissance Man in Bengal.... But who was the first one? Raja Rammohan Roy? Maybe yes.... Again, the Raja — known more as a social reformer than anything else in the context of Bengali culture — was not what we may call as a Renaissance Man, as he was more inclined to the West though his heart was embedded in Bengal.

Twenty-eight years after the Raja was buried — not cremated like the Hindu tradition — in Bristol, birth of a child at his friend Prince Dwarkanath's Jorasanko house marked the beginning of a new era in the Bengali tradition that we all carry forward for years.

And, that summer day also celebrated the birth of Brand Tagore — the best company Bengalis always take pride on. Whatever be our decline in fields of manufacturing industries or in the mines or elsewhere in the last 50 years, our governments — yes, every government irrespective of political colours — have developed this idea of promoting Brand Tagore. Even in a country where Amlasole has been synonymous with "hunger-death"or Irom Sharmila an icon of protecting human rights, the government does not think twice to announce a Rs 1-crore award for spreading the message of peace and brotherhood of Tagore!

Marketing Tagore is the best thing that India, especially Bengal, can do at this time of crisis — not financial, but mental — when we have lost our values, forget the industries. Tagore was the last one to show which way the Bengalis should go though we have drifted quite a few miles from it. "Mahajana jeno gata sa pantha" is the sloka we remember but never implement. Crores are spent on Tagore's birthday every year — and in the sesquicentennial year, we splurge it like never before — when nobody bothers how problems of unemployment can be addressed. Lakhs are doled out to local clubs by politicians — and we've seen many a hundred clubs are blessed by a particular party this season — so that late-night booze parties are held on the same stage where Rabindrasangeet, the quintessential Tagore mark, had been performed just 12 hours back! How can RJs on popular FM channels change this mindscape with innumerable songs played through the day like what we saw yesterday?