Can the litter: For spic & span city, locals need to step up

THANE: While launching the ‘Swacch Bharat’ campaign on October 2 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had pledged, “I will not litter and I will not allow others to litter.” Through this campaign, the Prime Minister urged citizens to put up a united fight against litter just like the battle for Independence.
However, barring the sporadic drive by city politicians, who descended on the streets holding a broom, intended for media photo op, the significance of the campaign for cleanliness and a litter-free Thane has been completely lost, or so one can safely assume.
An extensive litter audit by TOI over the last four days here not just revealed the shameful and dirty conditions of our neighbourhood, it also stressed the need for education, awareness and behavioral change among the denizens of the city.
Already, the city administration is facing a mammoth task of collection and disposal of 700 metric tonnes of garbage, given the absence of a dedicated dumping yard or a scientific disposal system.
To add to this problem are the litter louts who casually toss a plastic bottle or a wrapper on the streets, blaming it all on the civic administration and the “lazy sweepers” for the piles of rotting rubbish on the city streets, lanes and the nullahs.
The citizens’ response to the TOI campaign has been overwhelming. Most of them acknowledged the need for more trash bins in public places to prevent litter on the streets. In fact, they also promised to take cue from their children who, they said, were extremely cautious about littering on the streets and preferred to carry the wrappers or the plastic bottles back home or search for a bin close by.
“It is time to put these litter louts to public shame. A neighbourhood programme should be launched wherein those found littering should be photographed and their photographs uploaded giving them the apt title of ‘Litterati of Thane’,” was one solution offered by Nandagopal Sankar, a resident of Valley Towers here.
Top officials in the Thane Municipal Corporation said imposing penalty for littering will not change old habits.
“Till such a time that the stakeholders or the citizens are not involved, no campaign will succeed. The corporation can frame sub-rules under the municipal solid waste management act whereby it can penalize citizens, but before that it has to have taken adequate measures to ensure that the streets are free of litter,” the senior bureaucrat said.
To begin with, the official added, the TMC could fix up responsibility of keeping an area of up to 500 metres around any eating joint or commercial shop on the business establishments who will put up trash bins along the sidewalks.
“These establishments will be responsible for the timely disposal of waste at the ghanta-gadis, which take a tour once a day. The bins should be decorative in nature and should have an aesthetic connect with the neighbourhood. It is a much better way to task the citizens with the responsibility of keeping the city clean than issuing a notification to penalize them with fines,” he said.