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The article does a good job of pointing out that environmental activism in India is entirely conducted by the upper-middle class. The majority of people living

The article does a good job of pointing out that environmental activism in India is entirely conducted by the upper-middle class. The majority of people living in Mumbai simply do not have the time to care one way or another about these things. Last month I was in Mumbai visiting relatives, and found the ocean front is still covered in trash as it has been for decades. The vendors selling tea and snacks along the oceanfront are technically not allowed to sell there, so their primary concern is to make more money than they paid as a bribe to the beachfront police that day - the single-use cups and plates making it into a trash can is the least of anyone's concerns.

victor106 4y ago
I love India. But I don’t understand why India is so dirty? I ask my offshore colleagues and some say it’s the population, some say it’s the culture and some blame it on politicians.
- rr808 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons just with more people and less space.
  - Dig1t 4y ago
    Why does this principle apply to India but not say Japan, Sweden, or Singapore?
    - feet 4y ago
      Because it is overly reductive and incorrect
    - rippercushions 4y ago
      Singapore hires armies of foreign workers to clean its streets. Although steep fines and heavy enforcement, including forcing litterers to clean the streets themselves, also helps.
    - ngc248 4y ago
      Size of population, homogeneity etc are factors which explain the difference. The city of Bangalore is bigger and more populous than Singapore.
- fooker 4y ago
  It's apathy.
- throwaway83242 4y ago
  You are asking the wrong people. The offshore people (i.e. people living in India) will just justify what they see as "part of culture". They are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Talk to some expat Indians and you may get an answer. As an expat, my reason is simple. Apathy!
  - 13of40 4y ago
    Where I live every house has a garbage can in front, trucks pick it up once a week, and every public space has multiple garbage cans that get emptied on a regular schedule. I didn't set the system up, and other than paying a bill every few months I'm not involved in running the system. Nobody is. It's provided for us and we take advantage of it. I visited Mumbai and Pune last year, and I saw the trash problem first hand, but I have a hard time pinning the problem on apathy versus simply not having a functioning sanitation system. In other words, if you take the most well-meaning person, leave them holding a piece of trash, then deprive them of anywhere to dispose of it, where do you think it's going to go?
    - tekla 4y ago
      You carry it like a normal person.
    - Cpoll 4y ago
      > if you take the most well-meaning person, leave them holding a piece of trash, then deprive them of anywhere to dispose of it, where do you think it's going to go? Counterpoint: In Japan, I often had to haul my garbage quite a bit before I found a trash can to dispose of it. No litter though. (To be fair, there are other factors; most people don't eat on the go, and there are usually garbage cans near convenience stores and vending machines).
    - simoncion 4y ago
      > [I]f you take the most well-meaning person, leave them holding a piece of trash, then deprive them of anywhere to dispose of it, where do you think it's going to go? I'm definitely not the most well-meaning person, but that piece of trash is going to go into my pocket (or stay in my hands) until I see a sufficiently-empty trash can or dumpster to place it in. It'll stay with me until I get home if it has to. I _do not_ get folks that toss trash around. It's just fuckin nuts.
- pkd 4y ago
  Not everywhere is. In big cities there is some mixture of tragedy of the commons, corruption and resource allocation problem. Garbage/waste collection is a local responsibility, but the city/municipal administrations in India are not very powerful compared to their Western counterparts. They don't have as much freedom in generating or dispersing with revenue and are mostly dependent on the state and national governments for their expenses. This makes it hard for the local government to do anything apart from the bare minimum.
- primitivesuave 4y ago
  Several studies have correlated education and income levels with environmental awareness. In practice, it is also due to corruption and the consequential failure of public services. The city I was born in (Dhanbad) suffers from rampant corruption, even by Indian standards - large swathes of the urban area have no other way to dispose of garbage other than paying private companies around $1-$2 per trash bag, which is then dumped in rivers and makeshift landfills. Dhanbad allocated around $34 million dollars to its public waste management company a couple years ago, yet even today it still hasn't managed to get standardized trash bins and collection routes for most households. Endemic corruption and tax avoidance cripples virtually every public service in India, and any systems of regulation (law enforcement, bureaucracy, politicians, journalism, etc) are firmly captured by the business interests that perpetuate it.
- dilawar 4y ago
  According to at least one anthropologist, the religious leaders were so obsessed with the idea of ritual purity and pollution that physical cleanliness took a beating. It is not easy to understand even for an Indian. Caste system foundations were also based on, or at least justified by, the idea of ritual purity and pollution. 'The remembered village' by MN Srinivas hints a bit about these things. While growing up in village, there were so many sayings now I understand. Like my soul is pure what if my hands are dirty or I havnt took bath for two days. Cleaniness of place is even less cared for and personal cleanliness. I get it that other dont understand why its so hard to keep your neighborhood clean. Its not hard, its just most dont care!. And before thr age of plastics, nature did all the cleaning during monsoon and summer. PS: It is not the politician. It is the people and culture.
  - jmeister 4y ago
    This makes sense. Steve Jobs famously observes this stark contrast during his india trip too. Though one can ask why this can’t be true of any ‘world-denying’ religion too? Judaism? Christianity? Why bother with physical cleanliness in this life when you’re gunning for salvation in the next one?
    - pkphilip 4y ago
      Hinduism's concept of salvation is very different from the Judeo-Christian understanding of salvation
  - unmole 4y ago
    > religious leaders were so obsessed with the idea of ritual purity and pollution that physical cleanliness took a beating. It is not easy to understand even for an Indian. Yeah, no. You see the same happening in poorer parts of South East Asia and Africa.
    - dilawar 4y ago
      In one of the Attenborough documentaries, they showed Hyenas visiting the capital of Ethiopia that locals feed them at night. I was like looks like a much poorer city than Bangalore, but darn their streets are so clean (even at night).
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  As an Indian, this meme makes me sad: https://i.redd.it/322obfbjpsaa1.png https://i.redd.it/322obfbjpsaa1.png India had one of the first civilizations with a functioning sanitary system, yet 4,000 years later, it is seemingly not yet on par with the Indus Valley civilization. Now, there are many factors for this of course, including population, corruption, apathy, etc, but still, the meme rings true.
- kart23 4y ago
  In my opinion, its a mixture of both. They don't have trash pickups in most places. So pretty much your only option to get rid of household trash is to burn it or dump it somewhere. And because there's no trashcans anywhere in public, people just toss trash wherever they like. Think about what your neighborhood would look like if there was no waste management services provided.
  - mc32 4y ago
    It leans heavy toward being cultural: Japan got rid of most public trashcans after an extremist group attacked civilians with sarin gas, some decades ago. The streets remained as trash-free as usual. On the other hand after work, at night, you may see a manager passed out with a pool of puke in a subway car… on the other hand it gets cleaned up pronto at the terminus and the car will be clean and his wallet won't go mysteriously missing.
    - darth_avocado 4y ago
      So you’re saying we need terrorism to keep the streets clean? /s
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - renewiltord 4y ago
        Birmingham New Street station did this and everything just got dirtier.
        kwhitefoot 4y ago
        British attitudes regarding litter is one of the things that people from other parts of Europe notice when they visit. It's definitely a cultural difference.
- raincom 4y ago
  A typical Indian family cleans their home twice a day. The dirtiness has to do with public places. In villages, all trash end up being in creeks--eventually ending up in oceans. In mega cities, sewage systems don't work, and they are not maintained properly. Small business people, even trash pickers who charge to pick up trash, dump their trash elsewhere. This list is endless.
  - mikymoothrowa 4y ago
    There are laws against dumping trash and sewage into creeks which do not get enforced. City corporations need money to enforce the laws and clean stuff up but housing taxes continue to remain disproportionately low and people don’t pay that either.
- pkphilip 4y ago
  It is the culture and I say this as an Indian. There are poorer nations surrounding India which are much cleaner - example: Srilanka, Nepal, Bhutan etc. I won't go into what exact part of culture results in this because it will upset a lot of people - but I do ask Indians reading my comment to ponder upon it without becoming defensive
  - JoeyBananas 4y ago
    I'm not Indian but here's an observation: Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan do not have any cities with 5+ million people. In fact, the most populated cities in those nations do not even exceed 1 million people.
    - pkphilip 4y ago
      It is not just the cities which are dirty in India
- rockyj 4y ago
  The answer is simple - there is no functioning city level garbage collection/disposal system. Outside of a handful of cities, there is no system to regularly collect garbage and dispose it properly. This is due to the sheer size and population of the cities combined with government and citizen apathy, lack of manpower, lack of funds, lack of knowledge etc. Lets see how it works generally in cities - millions of homes do their daily cleaning, there is no where to dump this garbage, so it is thrown street side or somewhere in a nearby small dump (https://scroll.in/article/802978/as-garbage-continues-to-pile-up-in-east-delhi-a-lesson-on-how-to-better-manage-our-waste https://scroll.in/article/802978/as-garbage-continues-to-pil...), then it is not collected for weeks, finally when it is collected it is thrown in a bigger dump (https://www.newsweek.com/trash-mountain-india-could-taller-taj-mahal-next-year-1442227 https://www.newsweek.com/trash-mountain-india-could-taller-t...). Only Indore that I know of (https://www.outlookindia.com/national/how-indore-became-the-cleanest-city-in-india-for-the-sixth-time-news-227284 https://www.outlookindia.com/national/how-indore-became-the-...) is doing proper garbage collection and disposal. p.s. my knowledge may not be fully up-to-date.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    > sheer size and population of the cities combined with government and citizen apathy, lack of manpower*, This is something I see often. How come with a large population there is a shortage of manpower? You see the same sort of thing in the UK, lots of people, high unemployment (more than twice what we have here in Norway), and yet there is a large amount of obvious work that needs doing like insulating houses and fixing holes in the road.
- Nifty3929 4y ago
  Because waste systems are very effortful. It would simply take lots and lots of labor to gather, transport, and dispose of all that trash in an organized way. Labor that is currently engaged in producing food, clothes, etc. Think about the relative population density in many of these cities as well. And the relative productivity. Not at all an easy problem to solve.
college_physics 4y ago
Garbage disposal is a huge industry in many parts of the world, giving employment to many people. It is also a cutting edge domain where abilities to recycle cost efficiently are needed for sustainability. So this is unfortunately a classic example where culture, by defining (and limiting) what people think is important, influences also their economic condition. But its not easy to instigate a culture of respect for the commons and appreciation for its smooth functioning. And implementing at scale garbage disposal, just like any other utility infrastructure, whether it is the post office, water or electricity requires further society "software" that is not trivial
- mikymoothrowa 4y ago
  You shouldn’t blame culture when investments on this front are lacking. Local governments in India are perennially short on money and it’s they who are responsible for things like water supply, sanitation and garbage collection. There are several joint venture garbage disposal companies operating in India. But only a few municipal corporations can afford to pay them. And those few cities that do use these services rank well in cleanliness rankings
  - college_physics 4y ago
    there is a catch-22 that must be broken somehow (with some initial outside injection of funds) but if people appreciate the service it enters a virtuous circle: the people working on garbage disposal get salaries, they consume more and pay taxes, the taxes support municipal services which pay the salaries and the loop is closing. people tend to discount how strong this circular effect is in the economy and implicitly assume that money is found under a rock (or stolen) and is essentially finite. there is some truth to that the sense that if the products or services people want depend on scarce natural resources (e.g. oil) then this creates a constraint. but for large parts of the economy the potential resides in our brains. not a specific blame at all as this applies everywhere, just to different degrees. think about art for example. we have only as much art as we think is important because all artists must live from the rest of us. but if people think its important and they somehow get paid, they contribute to general welfare with their own demands etc. its by no means trivial to change attitudes and there can be many other events that can derail those positive loops. but the general principle is something that should be appreciated more because that is ultimately how all wealth is built.

victor106 4y ago

I love India. But I don’t understand why India is so dirty? I ask my offshore colleagues and some say it’s the population, some say it’s the culture and some blame it on politicians.

rr808 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons just with more people and less space.
- Dig1t 4y ago
  Why does this principle apply to India but not say Japan, Sweden, or Singapore?
  - feet 4y ago
    Because it is overly reductive and incorrect
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    Singapore hires armies of foreign workers to clean its streets. Although steep fines and heavy enforcement, including forcing litterers to clean the streets themselves, also helps.
  - ngc248 4y ago
    Size of population, homogeneity etc are factors which explain the difference. The city of Bangalore is bigger and more populous than Singapore.
fooker 4y ago
It's apathy.
throwaway83242 4y ago
You are asking the wrong people. The offshore people (i.e. people living in India) will just justify what they see as "part of culture". They are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Talk to some expat Indians and you may get an answer. As an expat, my reason is simple. Apathy!
- 13of40 4y ago
  Where I live every house has a garbage can in front, trucks pick it up once a week, and every public space has multiple garbage cans that get emptied on a regular schedule. I didn't set the system up, and other than paying a bill every few months I'm not involved in running the system. Nobody is. It's provided for us and we take advantage of it. I visited Mumbai and Pune last year, and I saw the trash problem first hand, but I have a hard time pinning the problem on apathy versus simply not having a functioning sanitation system. In other words, if you take the most well-meaning person, leave them holding a piece of trash, then deprive them of anywhere to dispose of it, where do you think it's going to go?
  - tekla 4y ago
    You carry it like a normal person.
  - Cpoll 4y ago
    > if you take the most well-meaning person, leave them holding a piece of trash, then deprive them of anywhere to dispose of it, where do you think it's going to go? Counterpoint: In Japan, I often had to haul my garbage quite a bit before I found a trash can to dispose of it. No litter though. (To be fair, there are other factors; most people don't eat on the go, and there are usually garbage cans near convenience stores and vending machines).
  - simoncion 4y ago
    > [I]f you take the most well-meaning person, leave them holding a piece of trash, then deprive them of anywhere to dispose of it, where do you think it's going to go? I'm definitely not the most well-meaning person, but that piece of trash is going to go into my pocket (or stay in my hands) until I see a sufficiently-empty trash can or dumpster to place it in. It'll stay with me until I get home if it has to. I _do not_ get folks that toss trash around. It's just fuckin nuts.
pkd 4y ago
Not everywhere is. In big cities there is some mixture of tragedy of the commons, corruption and resource allocation problem. Garbage/waste collection is a local responsibility, but the city/municipal administrations in India are not very powerful compared to their Western counterparts. They don't have as much freedom in generating or dispersing with revenue and are mostly dependent on the state and national governments for their expenses. This makes it hard for the local government to do anything apart from the bare minimum.
primitivesuave 4y ago
Several studies have correlated education and income levels with environmental awareness. In practice, it is also due to corruption and the consequential failure of public services. The city I was born in (Dhanbad) suffers from rampant corruption, even by Indian standards - large swathes of the urban area have no other way to dispose of garbage other than paying private companies around $1-$2 per trash bag, which is then dumped in rivers and makeshift landfills. Dhanbad allocated around $34 million dollars to its public waste management company a couple years ago, yet even today it still hasn't managed to get standardized trash bins and collection routes for most households. Endemic corruption and tax avoidance cripples virtually every public service in India, and any systems of regulation (law enforcement, bureaucracy, politicians, journalism, etc) are firmly captured by the business interests that perpetuate it.
dilawar 4y ago
According to at least one anthropologist, the religious leaders were so obsessed with the idea of ritual purity and pollution that physical cleanliness took a beating. It is not easy to understand even for an Indian. Caste system foundations were also based on, or at least justified by, the idea of ritual purity and pollution. 'The remembered village' by MN Srinivas hints a bit about these things. While growing up in village, there were so many sayings now I understand. Like my soul is pure what if my hands are dirty or I havnt took bath for two days. Cleaniness of place is even less cared for and personal cleanliness. I get it that other dont understand why its so hard to keep your neighborhood clean. Its not hard, its just most dont care!. And before thr age of plastics, nature did all the cleaning during monsoon and summer. PS: It is not the politician. It is the people and culture.
- jmeister 4y ago
  This makes sense. Steve Jobs famously observes this stark contrast during his india trip too. Though one can ask why this can’t be true of any ‘world-denying’ religion too? Judaism? Christianity? Why bother with physical cleanliness in this life when you’re gunning for salvation in the next one?
  - pkphilip 4y ago
    Hinduism's concept of salvation is very different from the Judeo-Christian understanding of salvation
- unmole 4y ago
  > religious leaders were so obsessed with the idea of ritual purity and pollution that physical cleanliness took a beating. It is not easy to understand even for an Indian. Yeah, no. You see the same happening in poorer parts of South East Asia and Africa.
  - dilawar 4y ago
    In one of the Attenborough documentaries, they showed Hyenas visiting the capital of Ethiopia that locals feed them at night. I was like looks like a much poorer city than Bangalore, but darn their streets are so clean (even at night).
satvikpendem 4y ago
As an Indian, this meme makes me sad: https://i.redd.it/322obfbjpsaa1.png https://i.redd.it/322obfbjpsaa1.png India had one of the first civilizations with a functioning sanitary system, yet 4,000 years later, it is seemingly not yet on par with the Indus Valley civilization. Now, there are many factors for this of course, including population, corruption, apathy, etc, but still, the meme rings true.
kart23 4y ago
In my opinion, its a mixture of both. They don't have trash pickups in most places. So pretty much your only option to get rid of household trash is to burn it or dump it somewhere. And because there's no trashcans anywhere in public, people just toss trash wherever they like. Think about what your neighborhood would look like if there was no waste management services provided.
- mc32 4y ago
  It leans heavy toward being cultural: Japan got rid of most public trashcans after an extremist group attacked civilians with sarin gas, some decades ago. The streets remained as trash-free as usual. On the other hand after work, at night, you may see a manager passed out with a pool of puke in a subway car… on the other hand it gets cleaned up pronto at the terminus and the car will be clean and his wallet won't go mysteriously missing.
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    So you’re saying we need terrorism to keep the streets clean? /s
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - renewiltord 4y ago
      Birmingham New Street station did this and everything just got dirtier.
      - kwhitefoot 4y ago
        British attitudes regarding litter is one of the things that people from other parts of Europe notice when they visit. It's definitely a cultural difference.
raincom 4y ago
A typical Indian family cleans their home twice a day. The dirtiness has to do with public places. In villages, all trash end up being in creeks--eventually ending up in oceans. In mega cities, sewage systems don't work, and they are not maintained properly. Small business people, even trash pickers who charge to pick up trash, dump their trash elsewhere. This list is endless.
- mikymoothrowa 4y ago
  There are laws against dumping trash and sewage into creeks which do not get enforced. City corporations need money to enforce the laws and clean stuff up but housing taxes continue to remain disproportionately low and people don’t pay that either.
pkphilip 4y ago
It is the culture and I say this as an Indian. There are poorer nations surrounding India which are much cleaner - example: Srilanka, Nepal, Bhutan etc. I won't go into what exact part of culture results in this because it will upset a lot of people - but I do ask Indians reading my comment to ponder upon it without becoming defensive
- JoeyBananas 4y ago
  I'm not Indian but here's an observation: Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan do not have any cities with 5+ million people. In fact, the most populated cities in those nations do not even exceed 1 million people.
  - pkphilip 4y ago
    It is not just the cities which are dirty in India
rockyj 4y ago
The answer is simple - there is no functioning city level garbage collection/disposal system. Outside of a handful of cities, there is no system to regularly collect garbage and dispose it properly. This is due to the sheer size and population of the cities combined with government and citizen apathy, lack of manpower, lack of funds, lack of knowledge etc. Lets see how it works generally in cities - millions of homes do their daily cleaning, there is no where to dump this garbage, so it is thrown street side or somewhere in a nearby small dump (https://scroll.in/article/802978/as-garbage-continues-to-pile-up-in-east-delhi-a-lesson-on-how-to-better-manage-our-waste https://scroll.in/article/802978/as-garbage-continues-to-pil...), then it is not collected for weeks, finally when it is collected it is thrown in a bigger dump (https://www.newsweek.com/trash-mountain-india-could-taller-taj-mahal-next-year-1442227 https://www.newsweek.com/trash-mountain-india-could-taller-t...). Only Indore that I know of (https://www.outlookindia.com/national/how-indore-became-the-cleanest-city-in-india-for-the-sixth-time-news-227284 https://www.outlookindia.com/national/how-indore-became-the-...) is doing proper garbage collection and disposal. p.s. my knowledge may not be fully up-to-date.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  > sheer size and population of the cities combined with government and citizen apathy, lack of manpower*, This is something I see often. How come with a large population there is a shortage of manpower? You see the same sort of thing in the UK, lots of people, high unemployment (more than twice what we have here in Norway), and yet there is a large amount of obvious work that needs doing like insulating houses and fixing holes in the road.
Nifty3929 4y ago
Because waste systems are very effortful. It would simply take lots and lots of labor to gather, transport, and dispose of all that trash in an organized way. Labor that is currently engaged in producing food, clothes, etc. Think about the relative population density in many of these cities as well. And the relative productivity. Not at all an easy problem to solve.

college_physics 4y ago

Garbage disposal is a huge industry in many parts of the world, giving employment to many people. It is also a cutting edge domain where abilities to recycle cost efficiently are needed for sustainability. So this is unfortunately a classic example where culture, by defining (and limiting) what people think is important, influences also their economic condition. But its not easy to instigate a culture of respect for the commons and appreciation for its smooth functioning. And implementing at scale garbage disposal, just like any other utility infrastructure, whether it is the post office, water or electricity requires further society "software" that is not trivial

mikymoothrowa 4y ago
You shouldn’t blame culture when investments on this front are lacking. Local governments in India are perennially short on money and it’s they who are responsible for things like water supply, sanitation and garbage collection. There are several joint venture garbage disposal companies operating in India. But only a few municipal corporations can afford to pay them. And those few cities that do use these services rank well in cleanliness rankings
- college_physics 4y ago
  there is a catch-22 that must be broken somehow (with some initial outside injection of funds) but if people appreciate the service it enters a virtuous circle: the people working on garbage disposal get salaries, they consume more and pay taxes, the taxes support municipal services which pay the salaries and the loop is closing. people tend to discount how strong this circular effect is in the economy and implicitly assume that money is found under a rock (or stolen) and is essentially finite. there is some truth to that the sense that if the products or services people want depend on scarce natural resources (e.g. oil) then this creates a constraint. but for large parts of the economy the potential resides in our brains. not a specific blame at all as this applies everywhere, just to different degrees. think about art for example. we have only as much art as we think is important because all artists must live from the rest of us. but if people think its important and they somehow get paid, they contribute to general welfare with their own demands etc. its by no means trivial to change attitudes and there can be many other events that can derail those positive loops. but the general principle is something that should be appreciated more because that is ultimately how all wealth is built.