By Dr. Walunir | EMN
Unban cleanliness and hygiene require, among others, two major processes - top down and bottom up. In the urban centers, the authority concerned has its share of the ‘cleaning’ while the townspeople or city dwellers and the migrant section have their own individual share of keeping their town or city clean. Governmental agencies are majorly responsible for development of drainage system, waste control and waste management (collection, disposal or recycling), etc. and corresponding infrastructure. Beyond that, public can play a vital role to enhance adequate civic sense in the urban centers.
Keeping one’s habitat (village or city) clean and hygienic is intrinsic to ethical practices of human beings. This natural attitude of human life is acutely wanting in urban centers. One should understand that spitting in the street is same as spitting in one’s own living room or kitchen. Conversely, self-restraint from littering the street or any public place is as good as keeping one’s living room clean. Littering in public place should then rouse a strong sense of guilt and shame similar to the feeling of shame in keeping one’s house dirty.
Public in the urban centers, whether indigenous or otherwise, seldom do not have a sense of ownership of the city/town they live in. As such, they don’t feel responsible towards keeping it clean. They may unconsciously or consciously suffer from a sense of isolation, detachment and indifference from the city’s existence. So they will share neither the ‘pride’ or ‘shame’ of the city’s being. Here comes the importance of ownership, belongingness and responsibility. The urban populace should have a deep sense of attachment and care for public places and spaces in the same manner they have for their private houses. They should develop a civic bonding of kinship with the street, market, school, public office, railway station, etc. Only then every urban dweller will have an urge to keep his/her city clean.
Government initiated cleanliness drive, especially in Nagaland, is basically an implementation of a nationwide popular scheme of keeping its country clean. It is also endorsed or implemented with an element of legal compulsion. Cleaning the city or town should not be reduced to annual governmental endorsed cleanliness event or relegated to the Municipalities. The urge to keep city/town clean should run in the veins or every sensible inhabitant of Nagaland. Nagaland can surely go a step further by contextualizing ‘Swaach Bharat’ or any other such governmental cleanliness drives within the Naga traditional civic sense. Here it will read as Naga heritage of community social service and social work. Even the migratory populace can also be kept in check through the high civic sense of the dwelling populace.
High civic sense is part of human attitudes intrinsic to every human being. This can/should be constituted within individual sensibility from an early age so that the individual qualify as complete human beings in the later stages of life. Kids can imbibe this attitude first at home but how will they realize cleanliness as a personal responsibility and not the duty of the ‘domestic help’? When it comes to educational institutions, urban civic sense, hygiene and cleanliness should not be completely reduced to theory and class-room lessons to be mugged up and tested in written exams. This means that an individual’s performance on civic sense will be evaluated in the ‘streets’ or open public spaces of urban centers whereby the urban dwellers will ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ in their actions, practices and attitudes.
The practice of clean city can be incubated in sensible minds with high civic sense which cannot be cultured in the circuit of law and governance. They are part of good practices of matured, civilized and refined human beings. From a holistic perspective of cleanliness and hygiene, Nagaland is/can be ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ not because of government’s action or inaction. It should be situated within the larger Naga tradition. So it is the responsibility of every inhabitant of Nagaland to carry forward the legacy of this unique cultural heritage of high civic sense.
