Lessons for the Ugly Goan: Ugly Indians and their experiments in public hygiene

In a discussion located somewhere in cyberspace, collective attention was directed toward the efforts and website of a collective of citizens in Bangalore who have grouped themselves under the name of The Ugly Indian. Fed up with the filth and litter on the streets of Bangalore, this group took it upon itself to bring a halt to the spitting (of pan), the careless littering and dumping of garbage, public (male) urination, and a variety of other factors that make life in urban India an unnecessarily unpleasant experience.

At first glance, the website starts on a disturbing note. It is marked by a high level of the self-flagellation that marks so many Indians, from various socio-economic groups. It accepts that there is such a universal category as ‘Indian’ and then moves on to suggest that we Indians are incredibly accepting of filth, and that we can take any system and mess it up, whether in India, or outside India. As examples they suggest we take a look at “Streets in Indian-dominated suburbs overseas … Southall (London), Edison (New Jersey) and Little India (Singapore)” that “are good indicators of this lack of civic sense.” As a result therefore, this group suggests that we acknowledge to ourselves that we are all of us, “Ugly Indians”.

The 'Indian'?

Even though it turns out that this initial self-flagellation may in fact be a clever technique to draw the reader into the website and spur one to action, there is something terribly uncomfortable about what this framing reveals of the mind of the members of the group. Despite this discomfort however, what is truly interesting is that the members of this group are able to leave behind the useless, almost masturbatory, complaining that marks the Indian middle class when speaking of social ills, and make very interesting forays into the area that they identify as being a problem.

What is interesting about the initiatives of this group is that they do not suggest the usual routes of fines, nor ‘sensitization’ that are so often touted as solutions to the problem. Both these solutions, it should be pointed out, are particularly top-down methods, that share with the Gandhian method, a presumption that the some of us know the rules, but it is the others, necessarily lower down in the social scale, who need to be educated and if that doesn’t work, punished. Behold then, the methods of the Ugly Indians.

What they suggest is a communal approach, where we see ourselves as a group of people that must necessarily work together. Thus, rather than adopt the somewhat Gandhian martyr for the masses route, they agree that the action needs to start with one Ugly Indian, but that this action must necessarily involve the rest of the Ugly Indians on an equal footing. They point out, “this is about persuasion and smart design. It involves understanding why people were like that only, and not lecturing. It required building trust with the garbage collectors. With the shop-owners. With cleaning staff. With the recyclers.”

Their initiative worked they report, and like other successful experiments in waste management that have worked in India, it appears to have succeeded, not only because of the good will of elite citizens, but because it involved not just working with the normally ignored and neglected Municipality sanitation workers, but also the third wheel of the system, the recyclers of the informal sector.

 

Thus what seems to work is a method where we abandon the kind of command operations normally resorted to, where we direct others to do their job. Instead we need to engage with those whose job it is, without placing ourselves on the Gandhian high moral pedestal, where we make these public employees feel obliged for our engagement, and where the project is more about our sense of being wonderful, rather than in fact resolving the problem.

What also needs to be highlighted is the suggestion of this group; that the reason a number of initiatives do not work, is because these initiatives are informed by bad design. They stress that “Filth on footpaths is not random. It is part of a predictable daily cycle.” Figure out the way this cycle operates therefore, and you can design a solution that will break the rhythm of the cycle and resolve the problem. Thus in the case of a street filled with paan stains, they painted the wall white with a border of red at the bottom, placed pots with palm leaves and it seems as if their logic worked. The freshly painted white wall seemed to prevent people from spitting on something that looked like property that was cared for. Further, when the first paan-stain appeared, these Ugly Indians went and painted over it again. Continued interest in the project clearly then, is another element to a successful initiative. They also pointed out that one needs to recognize that pots could get stolen, so one places pots that no one would want to steal. The palms they suggest, was because the fronds ensured the spitter might get some of the spit on himself! Clearly then, meticulous attention to detail is another clever part of the initiative.

But it is not just culturally specific issues that the Ugly Indians deal with. They acknowledge that some kind of litter, like cigarette butts has absolutely no solution across the world, and that “No garbage clearing system is designed to handle this kind of litter.” Undeterred by this fact however, and convinced that every cigarette smoker is in fact a decent person, they set about designing a public receptacle for cigarette related waste, guided by the following rules “It should not catch fire. It should be at a convenient height and place. It should look like a bin. It should not get stolen. It should be easy to clean. It should work!” The result; a bin constructed from waste pipes, and more importantly, adopted by a local café. So effective was their design it turns out, that people would also use the bin as a spittoon, spitting directly into the bin, and not soiling the base! What most people who castigate spitters forget, is that paan chewing is integral to some parts of Indian society. Rather than get them to give it up therefore, it seem to make more sense to install more intelligently designed public spittoons all over the place.

The Ugly Indians set us on an interesting path for addressing problems in our urban spaces. Rather than the traditional Gandhian method, they suggest we work with the lower order public employees, who in many cases are delighted to be given importance and happy to help. Second, it requires a sustained level of public involvement, without expecting applause, recognizing we are merely acting in our best interest. Finally, the issue is about better design. As any designer would tell you, design begins with understanding the patterns of the intended user or client. Understand the pattern and you are able to fix the design challenge!

The stage, it appears, is now set for the Ugly Goans to come forward and take charge.

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times dtd 15 Aug 2012)

Gandhi and Hazare: Two peas in a pod?

Subsequent to Anna Hazare’s ‘endorsement’ of Narendra Modi, a number of persons, who formerly supported Hazare and his Gandhian method, found themselves angry and confused. They could not understand how Hazare, a Gandhian could make such an endorsement.

We should perhaps give thanks to Hazare for his entire intervention, right from his decision to fast unto death. It has allowed for a number of revelations about the peculiar nuances of the Indian political system. In particular it allows us a position from which we can evaluate Gandhi himself, and see him as a man, not as the god he has been converted into. Indeed, it is precisely because we have deified Gandhi, that we have ignored the problems that are a part of Gandhianism.

In his argument against Hazare’s fast, Pratap Bhanu Mehta argued that ‘The morality of fasting unto death for a political cause in a constitutional democracy has always been a tricky issue.’ He further argued that a fast to persuade the Government to adopt one’s own formula for institutional change was a rather perverse utilisation of this method and amounted to arm-twisting. Mehta however understates the problem. The morality of a fast to death has always been a tricky issue. Gandhi himself was aware of the problem, arguing that ‘A Satyagrahi should fast only as a last resort when all other avenues of redress have been explored and have failed.’ But Gandhi was not without his contradictions, and also used fasts to arm-twist people to meeting the goals he had set out for the ‘nation’.

Take for example Gandhi’s indefinite fast in the face of the Communal Award of 1932. The Communal Award was granted to ensure separate electorates and hence separate representation to the various minorities in the British Raj, including the Muslims, Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, and Dalits. Gandhi agreed with this award for most of these electorates but drew the line at a separate electorate for the Dalits. He would have none of it. Such a separation would threaten the unity of the ‘Hindu community’ he argued. Clearly, the Dalits, under the leadership of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, did not see themselves as Hindus and feared an eclipse of their interests by the ‘upper’ castes if not provided an electoral mechanism to safeguard these. When Ambedkar refused to give up on this assurance for Dalit interests, Gandhi began his indefinite fast. Sure enough, pressure mounted on Dr. Ambedkar, who realised that should Gandhi die as a result of the fast, Ambedkar and the Dalits would be held responsible for Gandhi’s death. Succumbing to the pressure, Ambedkar gave up his demand for separate electorates, agreeing to the provisions of the Poona Pact.

The use of the fast in this context was to effectively bully one’s way to success. It follows therefore, that when Hazare opted to fast unto death to get his way with the Jan Lokpal Bill, he was acting in Gandhi’s not so ethical foot-steps.

These same events that led to the Poona Pact, also point to the manner in which Gandhi, despite his much professed, and no doubt genuine, horror against ethnic violence, also worked to consolidate the construction of a homogenous Hindu community that would lead the Indian nation. Gandhi’s refusal to see Ambedkar’s rather valid point of a need for separate electorates was not surprising. Gandhi saw the end of the caste system not through the recognition and assertion of Dalit rights, but through the melting of ‘upper’ caste hearts against such atrocities. When Dalit activists today reject the Gandhian neologism ‘Harijans’ as condescending, they are rejecting Gandhi’s concept of a Hindu fold, where ‘upper’ castes were firmly seated at the top. Take for example as well, the terminology Gandhi used, such as ‘Ram Rajya’, a term deeply rooted in the Vaishnava tradition, to signify the political structure post-Independence. Gandhi was, we have to admit, rooted in an ‘upper’ caste Hindu vision of India.

As if this were not enough, we should also have a look at the manner in which a number of Gandhians, subsequent to the passing of the freedom struggle seem to have found their place within a distinctly saffron order of things. One does not have to look far. Within Goa itself, those who gained fame as Gandhians, were in fact bitterly opposed to the recognition of difference (in this case that of the additional recognition of the Roman script for Konkani) and insisted on the brahmanical script of Devanagari. Indian-ness to these Gandhians, was located in an ‘upper’ caste Hindu view of the subcontinent.

We should therefore once more not be surprised that Anna Hazare sat underneath an image of a ‘Bharath Matha’. Many groups in India have a problem with the depiction and deification of India as a Hindu goddess. Even more unfortunate was the fact that the depiction that Hazare sat underneath was to a remarkable extent the image of the RSS Bharath Matha. All that was missing was the Lion the RSS Matha leans against, and a replacement of the saffron flag with the Indian tricolour. If you were intimate with the RSS image however, you knew that the lady up there was the RSS Matha. Add to this the songs sung at the Hazare protest that were markedly Hindu and upper-caste, and anti-reservation in tone. . It is also no surprise that Hazare seemed able to make a distinction between Modi’s ‘governance’ and his ‘communalism’, for Gandhianism is infact strongly marked by the presence of ‘upper’ caste (largely Hindu) values and perspectives.

Hazare’s meet was marked also by the presence of Archbishop Vincent Concesso and Maulana Madani. This is not a mark of secularism, but a problematic entangling of faith and religion. Gandhi himself laid the foundations for this with the religious imagery he used, recognising people as members of religious groups with distinct religious interests. The Khilafat movement, which he used as a way to unite Muslims and Hindus against the British, is one pertinent example.

We should recognise then, that the Gandhian project, for all its contribution to the Indian freedom struggle, and global struggles (and these are many and substantial) is filled with contradictions. We need to recognise that Gandhi was actively deified by the national movement, a process that Gandhi played along with. This deification masks the fact that Gandhi contradicted his high moral codes, and periodically engaged in arm-twisting. After all, he was primarily a political leader. Secondly, his project, though not rabidly right-wing, was nevertheless imbued with shades of Hindu nationalism. When Anna Hazare then claims to be a Gandhian, we must recognise that the contradictions that we see in him are not contradictions that he personally brings, but part of the contradictions that were present even within Gandhi, often faithfully carried forward by contemporary Gandhians.

(A version first published in the Gomantak Times 27 April 2011)