This is the attitude across the country. Remember that the Delhi Legislative Assembly or Municipal Corporation passed a motion condemning the Queen of England some time in early nineties for making a remark about Delhi being stinky and filthy. Who is she to tell how we live.. it is none of her business is what most of our "leaders" said, then. The story got repeated many times over, whenever anyone tried saying the same, whether an "outsider" like the Queen or an "insider" like Delhi's Lt Governor or current Chief Minister. This is more of an ego issue, we know we are dirty/filthy but who are you to tell us. So you don't tell us and we obviously don't realise or when we do, we don't want to take any action to improve. This goes on to show that for those in power it does not make a difference, may be they feel closer to masses when they are in such surroundings that is filthier than their own.
That attitude is what forced some citizens to join together to start the awareness campaigns like "Lets do it !! Delhi", "Save our Yamuna", "Greenethon" etc. The experience shared by "Lets do it !! Delhi" is that when a group took on the task of cleaning areas of Delhi (in the beginning of Feb 2010) unto themselves, lots of people who saw them doing automatically joined.. there wasn't not only no resistance but corporates even deployed teams to assist as they saw that if "outsiders" can clean our surroundings, why not us? During the first experiment at Rose Garden the park users were surprised and wondered why some people are doing this, but can't remember if any one of the regular park visitors came forward to join. But in the subsequent attempt at Bhikaji Cama Place that is a commercial locality,large number of volunteers joined most of them from the locality. The experience shared by those who volunteered shows that they felt quite "good" by being part of the "cause". I am sure not only they won't spread the filth but will also deter others from doing so. The people associated with the movement feel that if this could be sustained for some more time the spread will be big and Delhi will be a different (clean) place soon. The experiment of "Lets Do it!! Estonia" worked on similar lines and was the spark in starting it in Delhi by Anita Bhargava, a former Corporate Executive and a Marathon Runner.
Lets be conscious of our surrounding and do our best in keeping it "Clean".. first your building, then the locality, then the city.. and the whole country.. it will be a show case of Clean, pleasing place that we envy today when we look at "foreign" countries like Singapore for example.
We can do it.. lets do it!! "Lets Do it !! Delhi".. "Lets do it!! India".. "Lets do it!! Mother Earth".:)
