‘Be the change you wish to see’ – Gandhi.

I’m not Indian, however, as a friend of India, I hope the country to become cleaner.  I’ve visited India twice, both for work and personal reasons. It’s a great country with lots of untapped potentials. However, I have to agree that: India is not clean- especially the public areas such as street,  pedestrian subways and common areas of residential communities. It is not a secret that trashes, paan stains on the wall, open dumps, public urination, death traps, .etc, are commonly visible on the street of Bangalore.

I recently watched an inspirational TeD talk  from TEDxBangalore called ‘Why is India so filthy?’. A citizen of India who loves the country anomalously confessed the ‘ugly truth’ of the country, and proposed his thought on how to solve it. So why is ‘India so filthy?’ If we imagine a perfect world with good governance, in which there are no corruptions, strong government revenues, etc., will the problem of ‘public filth’ being solved?  No.

So is there hope? Yes, and the answer lies on the Indian people themselves. There are two theories that could well explain the underlying problem. One is called the ‘Broken Window Theory‘,  which is to say that visible signs of crime encourages further crimes, including serious crimes. In other word, broken window tends to become even more broken, and unbroken window tends to stay intact. To extrapolate even further, even if someone breaks a good window, someone will fix it, but few people will try to a fix a seriously damaged window. Simply put, ugliness attracts ugliness, cleanness attracts cleanness. Another theory is called ‘The Tragedy of the Commons‘, which is an economic problem that every individual will try to reap the greatest benefits from a given common resource that is easily available to all individuals; the tragedy of the commons occurs when individuals neglect the well-being of society in the pursuit of personal gain. This is the root cause for issues like public dump.

In summary, the only way to fix a broken window is to have someone fix it first. Once someone makes the window clean, the elegance itself commands respect. Similarly, the only way to solve a public problem is to let the problem become personal. Once each small community unites together to face the problem collaboratively, it is no longer a public issue and ‘the better angel of our nature’ will motivate us to help solve the issues. Good will attracts good will. As well put by Gandhi: ‘Be the change you wish to see.’ If you take a lead, people will follow, or ignore you- but no one will and could stop you.  The anomalously run ‘Ugly Indian Project’ has led to great success. Lots of volunteers, senior citizens, and even city mayors of India have worked together to solve the public problem. Now, many streets have become cleaner, and I believe India will continue to change for the better.

The same principles apply to many other aspects of life.

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