Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is one of the most popular or probably the well-known and significant missions in the history of India. This campaign was introduced by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and was launched on 2nd October 2014 to honour Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of a clean country. But how far was it implemented? Are we still honouring Mahatma Gandhi’s vision? Maybe Gandhi’s vision wasn’t just to have the roads clean but to have our whole country clean. But what we did wasn’t that. We cleaned the roads and dumped all of them in a huge land, in the so-called dump yard.
I don’t think it is right of humanity to encroach on a land to just dump some waste on it. Chitlapakkam lake covered a huge area of 219 acres and was a home for many birds and species but now has shrunken to almost it’s half size, just 161.16 acres. The Sembakkam lake has also shrunken in great size due to the land encroachment of dumping waste.
And it is really astonishing to hear that in India 0.8 Kg of waste is produced per person per day, which is a great amount of waste indeed. We not only convert beautiful lakes into dump yards but destroy the homes of many species. These lakes were just few near my dwelling. There are lot more in the process of getting destroyed.
So, what can we do to stop this?
What about trying a ZERO WASTE LIFE STYLE? A zero waste lifestyle is basically reducing the waste a person produces. This might include completely changing our life style too. Our ultimate goal would be to produce only a small tin of waste per year, so you can imagine the amount of waste being reduced. Maybe we should not name this as zero waste, we can call it as low waste lifestyle. This would include carrying bags to places we go and just visiting places where low waste life style is encouraged.
God has blessed us with a great life and a great country, but it doesn’t mean we can keep taking from nature and never giving back what we have taken. We, being the citizens of India, should possess ownership towards our country, and thus we should not watch our country’s natural sites getting destroyed.
India is our country, so it is our property, and saving our property should be the prime goal for everyone.
