Administrative Head's Desk:Swami Bhaveshananda

GANDHIJIS IDEA ON VILLAGE SANITATION

Swami Bhaveshananda

There is a proverb ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’. Mahatma Gandhi used to give much attention on cleanliness. If villages become clean, the mind of villagers also will be clean and villagers also will be free from different types of diseases which occur due to lack of hygiene. According to him, every rural development worker should first take initiative to clean villages as entry point activity before starting any work and he himself take leadership in sweeping with jharu to motivate others.  Cleanliness is one of the important parameters of a developed village.

Government of India is also giving much emphasis on this issue through implementation of different flagship programmes like The Clean India Mission, Namami Gange etc.

A few ideas of Gandhiji on cleanliness are given below:

i)                    The things to attend in villages are cleaning tanks and wells and keeping them clean, getting rid of dung heaps. If the workers will begin the work themselves, they may be sure that they will find that the villagers will sooner or later co-operate.

ii)                  a) Lanes and streets have to be cleaned of all the rubbish, which should be classified. There are portions which can be turned into manure, portions which have simply to be buried and portions which can be directly turned into wealth.

b) Every bone picked up is valuable raw material from which useful articles can be made or which can be crushed into rich manure.

c) Rags and waste-paper can be turned into paper, and excreta picked up are golden manure for the village fields.

d) The way to treat the excreta is to mix them, liquid as well as solid, with superficial earth in soil dug no deeper than one foot at the most.

iii)                Village tanks are used for bathing, washing cloths, and drinking and cooking purpose. Many village tanks are also used by cattle. Buffaloes are often to be seen wallowing in them. The wonder is that, in spite of this sinful misuse of village tanks, villages have not been destroyed by epidemics. It is the universal medical evidence that this neglect to ensure purity of the water supply of villages is responsible for many of the diseases suffered by the villagers. There should be separate tanks for men and cattle.

The rural sanitation problems and their solutions are nicely narrated in the above. The willing workers who will wield the broom and the shovel with the same ease and pride as the pen and the pencil, the question of expense is almost wholly eliminated. All the outlay that will be required is confined to a broom, a basket, a shovel and a pick-axe, and possibly some disinfectants. Dry ashes are, perhaps, as effective a disinfectant as any that a chemist can supply.

All of us can easily understand the importance of this cleanliness and its relevance at present day context. This great problem can easily be solved if all of us join our hands remembering the oft quoted passage, if the load of person is shared by many, it becomes simply a stick to all.’ If all of us become sweeper, there is no need of paid sweeper and cleanliness become natural as told by a citizen of Singapore to our former president A P J Abdul Kalam answering to a question: How the  cities of Singapore remain clean all the time?   

Let all of us try to practice this in our residence, working and public place to make our motherland clean, green and healthy.       

 Ref: Harijan, 8-2-'35
Krishak Devo Bhava _ October 2015