5 ms·

As someone originally from India, also a South Asian country, but where none of these bans ("litter, graffiti, spitting, expelling 'mucous from the nose' and ur

As someone originally from India, also a South Asian country, but where none of these bans ("litter, graffiti, spitting, expelling 'mucous from the nose' and urinating anywhere but in a toilet") are in place or being enforced -- I totally understand LKY's way of thinking, and agree with it. In India, a lot of people chew tobacco and betelnut leaves, spit them out straight on the street. Litter? No problem, just chuck it out the window. I have seen supposedly educated people throwing their banana peels and empty potato chip bags straight out the window of a bus rather than waiting for the next stop. Want to take a leak? Go against the nearest wall, and pee in the stench of 20 people who have gone before you. People seem to have no concept of keeping public spaces clean. Literally exactly the behaviours described in the Singaporean rules are rampant in India. All this leads to a fuck ton of garbage, filthy streets, and an image of being an unclean country. I wish we had had someone like LKY in the early 60s who could have prevented this from happening, and had given India an image of a modern country but with an ancient back-culture. I have often wondered about the deeper reason behind this behaviour; and my hypothesis is that it is related to the concept of the family as the main social unit in South and East Asian culture, rather than the broader society as a whole. So people will keep their own house sparkling clean, but not hesitate to spit against the wall in the street two blocks away. The Singaporean solution ("ban the spitting and enforce it with steep fines") was, in my opinion, the quickest and most pragmatic way of solving this problem for a large, densely populated Asian city. Kudos to him.

dhimes 12y ago
When I was a child in the 1960s and perhaps 1970s, there was a major PR push to get people in America to stop littering. The slogan was, "Keep America Beautiful" and it was complete with TV commercials and other vehicles of propaganda. My impression is that it worked. Not completely, but awareness increased and a majority of people quit throwing their cola bottles our of the car and such. The one thing that people didn't stop doing so much is throwing their cigarette butts onto the ground. Chewing gum is still a problem as well. When I would coach baseball (for my then-young kids) I would come home from the field with gum in my shoe. Just a few weeks ago at an airport I looked around for an outlet at a bar and noticed many wads of gum stuck under the bar. Why people still do these things is a mystery to me.
- smorrow 12y ago
  I don't chew gum and I don't smoke (I'm also not one of these anti-smoking dipshits), but it seems obvious to me that you're not just going to put gum or fag butts in your pocket until the next bin/whatever. It just isn't the same as sticking a Mars bar wrapper in a pocket. Not if you like your hands in your pockets.
beachstartup 12y ago
public cleanliness is just a side effect of development. new york and london were the same way in the 19th century. shanghai is rapidly developing and is reasonably clean. tokyo is immaculate because it is fully developed. taipei is very clean also. in fact cities like london and san francisco still have problems with people pissing and shitting all over the place, except it's due to alcohol and bums and not the level of development. many parts of san francisco reek of piss and shit and there's garbage everywhere after a busy saturday night.
- parennoob 12y ago
  > public cleanliness is just a side effect of development. new york and london were the same way in the 19th century. I agree, but a) India's cities are largely unplanned, and way denser than NY. Not sure about London. b) Waiting for another century's worth of development is not an effective way to make your country an attractive destination for tourism and investment.
  - selectodude 12y ago
    London isn't dense at all.
    - ZenoArrow 12y ago
      I agree with you, but I do wonder if the destructive acts of the Great Fire and the Blitz had a part to play in that.
      - selectodude 12y ago
        Biggest reason is that the soil in London is soft clay, making it incredibly expensive, and until recently, very difficult to build up, and very cheap and easy to build subways. Allowed sprawl to occur earlier than in other cities in the world.
- on_and_off 12y ago
  Development does not hurt but that's not the only requirement. I would be hard pressed to find a clean sidewalk in France. Many people just throw everything, from cigarette butts, gums to random garbage. I wonder if following Japan example and having the student clean the classroom would be helpful.
jacquesm 12y ago
> All this leads to a fuck ton of garbage, filthy streets, and an image of being an unclean country. By your description it is not just an image of an unclean country, but actually an unclean country. Just reading your description made me wonder if those people don't realize they subsequently have to live in the mess that they created.
- parennoob 12y ago
  > By your description it is not just an image of an unclean country, but actually an unclean country This is more or less true; depending upon density. In Delhi, city with several million people -- yes, it is an unclean place. A place far away in rural Odisha, maybe not so much. The difference is due to the fact that India is a country more than 70 times the size of the Netherlands, with around 400 spoken languages and a corresponding number of different cultures. So my observations (and the observations of most Westerners) which are mostly derived from large, dense cities might not scale that easily when applied to the whole country.
- twic 12y ago
  This is straight-up Tragedy of the Commons, isn't it? For each individual, choosing not to spit out their gum on the pavement wouldn't improve the environment to a noticeable degree, because there are thousands of other people still spitting out their gum. And because everyone thinks that way, the pavements are covered in gum.
praneshp 12y ago
> I have often wondered about the deeper reason behind this behaviour; and my hypothesis is that it is related to the concept of the family as the main social unit in South and East Asian culture, rather than the broader society as a whole. Totally agree. That and this attitude: "It's not like the country will be sparkling clean if I stop littering, there are a million others doing it".
mmatants 12y ago
It's amazing how much peer pressure via culture accounts for us being "civil". There is a link between an individual mostly-harmless action (flick a cigarette butt on the sidewalk) and the very visible systemic effect of a million people doing that same thing. But even for individuals that want clean sidewalks it is actually not a very obvious correlation to articulate in the moment - it takes a collective consciousness to draw the conclusion that a specific harmless transgression might add up across the population. And so the cultural code-of-conduct could be looked at as a "caching" technique for worldly experience and logic. Very convenient, except when it gets in the way of evolution of the originating logic and experience.
nivla 12y ago
I believe it has a lot to do with not shifting with the urbanization. The mindset of most people in India still remains from the earlier times. Think about it, in a rural environment, like a farm land or the woods, would you still look for a trash can to toss a banana peel? or perhaps a toilet to take a spit? Interestingly, even in developed countries when people go camping, they resort to primitive measures [1]. Earth is exceptionally good at recycling, so much so that the things we consider waste: banana peels, pee, poop etc are rich manures to plants aka compost. So it was understandable back in the days to dump things into the environment and heck even to do your business outside. However today with decrease of visible earth, and increase in non biodegradable products such as plastic, what was once a natural process has turned into a mess. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVU5kfTVEiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVU5kfTVEiA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3tBQs-sTf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3tBQs-sTf4
- parennoob 12y ago
  Yes, I understand the reason for this mindset, and even sympathize with it somewhat. > Interestingly, even in developed countries when people go camping, they resort to primitive measures True that. The stink in the outhouses in the "rustic" campgrounds in the USA is so horrible that I don't go there unless I really, really need to. It's about on par with the stink in (non-flush) rural Indian toilets. Going out in the woods would be so much more preferable. But anyway, coming back to the point -- this "back to nature" sort of mindset is no use in the densely populated cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Agra, etc. which in some way are the representation of the rest of India to the West. For reasons of sanitation at least, if not image. Ergo, I think an LKY-like enforcement of rules might help a lot.

dhimes 12y ago

When I was a child in the 1960s and perhaps 1970s, there was a major PR push to get people in America to stop littering. The slogan was, "Keep America Beautiful" and it was complete with TV commercials and other vehicles of propaganda. My impression is that it worked. Not completely, but awareness increased and a majority of people quit throwing their cola bottles our of the car and such. The one thing that people didn't stop doing so much is throwing their cigarette butts onto the ground. Chewing gum is still a problem as well. When I would coach baseball (for my then-young kids) I would come home from the field with gum in my shoe. Just a few weeks ago at an airport I looked around for an outlet at a bar and noticed many wads of gum stuck under the bar. Why people still do these things is a mystery to me.

smorrow 12y ago
I don't chew gum and I don't smoke (I'm also not one of these anti-smoking dipshits), but it seems obvious to me that you're not just going to put gum or fag butts in your pocket until the next bin/whatever. It just isn't the same as sticking a Mars bar wrapper in a pocket. Not if you like your hands in your pockets.

beachstartup 12y ago

public cleanliness is just a side effect of development. new york and london were the same way in the 19th century. shanghai is rapidly developing and is reasonably clean. tokyo is immaculate because it is fully developed. taipei is very clean also. in fact cities like london and san francisco still have problems with people pissing and shitting all over the place, except it's due to alcohol and bums and not the level of development. many parts of san francisco reek of piss and shit and there's garbage everywhere after a busy saturday night.

parennoob 12y ago
> public cleanliness is just a side effect of development. new york and london were the same way in the 19th century. I agree, but a) India's cities are largely unplanned, and way denser than NY. Not sure about London. b) Waiting for another century's worth of development is not an effective way to make your country an attractive destination for tourism and investment.
- selectodude 12y ago
  London isn't dense at all.
  - ZenoArrow 12y ago
    I agree with you, but I do wonder if the destructive acts of the Great Fire and the Blitz had a part to play in that.
    - selectodude 12y ago
      Biggest reason is that the soil in London is soft clay, making it incredibly expensive, and until recently, very difficult to build up, and very cheap and easy to build subways. Allowed sprawl to occur earlier than in other cities in the world.
on_and_off 12y ago
Development does not hurt but that's not the only requirement. I would be hard pressed to find a clean sidewalk in France. Many people just throw everything, from cigarette butts, gums to random garbage. I wonder if following Japan example and having the student clean the classroom would be helpful.

jacquesm 12y ago

> All this leads to a fuck ton of garbage, filthy streets, and an image of being an unclean country. By your description it is not just an image of an unclean country, but actually an unclean country. Just reading your description made me wonder if those people don't realize they subsequently have to live in the mess that they created.

parennoob 12y ago
> By your description it is not just an image of an unclean country, but actually an unclean country This is more or less true; depending upon density. In Delhi, city with several million people -- yes, it is an unclean place. A place far away in rural Odisha, maybe not so much. The difference is due to the fact that India is a country more than 70 times the size of the Netherlands, with around 400 spoken languages and a corresponding number of different cultures. So my observations (and the observations of most Westerners) which are mostly derived from large, dense cities might not scale that easily when applied to the whole country.
twic 12y ago
This is straight-up Tragedy of the Commons, isn't it? For each individual, choosing not to spit out their gum on the pavement wouldn't improve the environment to a noticeable degree, because there are thousands of other people still spitting out their gum. And because everyone thinks that way, the pavements are covered in gum.

praneshp 12y ago

> I have often wondered about the deeper reason behind this behaviour; and my hypothesis is that it is related to the concept of the family as the main social unit in South and East Asian culture, rather than the broader society as a whole. Totally agree. That and this attitude: "It's not like the country will be sparkling clean if I stop littering, there are a million others doing it".

mmatants 12y ago

It's amazing how much peer pressure via culture accounts for us being "civil". There is a link between an individual mostly-harmless action (flick a cigarette butt on the sidewalk) and the very visible systemic effect of a million people doing that same thing. But even for individuals that want clean sidewalks it is actually not a very obvious correlation to articulate in the moment - it takes a collective consciousness to draw the conclusion that a specific harmless transgression might add up across the population. And so the cultural code-of-conduct could be looked at as a "caching" technique for worldly experience and logic. Very convenient, except when it gets in the way of evolution of the originating logic and experience.

nivla 12y ago

I believe it has a lot to do with not shifting with the urbanization. The mindset of most people in India still remains from the earlier times. Think about it, in a rural environment, like a farm land or the woods, would you still look for a trash can to toss a banana peel? or perhaps a toilet to take a spit? Interestingly, even in developed countries when people go camping, they resort to primitive measures [1]. Earth is exceptionally good at recycling, so much so that the things we consider waste: banana peels, pee, poop etc are rich manures to plants aka compost. So it was understandable back in the days to dump things into the environment and heck even to do your business outside. However today with decrease of visible earth, and increase in non biodegradable products such as plastic, what was once a natural process has turned into a mess. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVU5kfTVEiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVU5kfTVEiA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3tBQs-sTf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3tBQs-sTf4

parennoob 12y ago
Yes, I understand the reason for this mindset, and even sympathize with it somewhat. > Interestingly, even in developed countries when people go camping, they resort to primitive measures True that. The stink in the outhouses in the "rustic" campgrounds in the USA is so horrible that I don't go there unless I really, really need to. It's about on par with the stink in (non-flush) rural Indian toilets. Going out in the woods would be so much more preferable. But anyway, coming back to the point -- this "back to nature" sort of mindset is no use in the densely populated cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Agra, etc. which in some way are the representation of the rest of India to the West. For reasons of sanitation at least, if not image. Ergo, I think an LKY-like enforcement of rules might help a lot.