Habits are difficult to get rid of or change. Man is a creature of habits, many essential and good; like washing hands before meals, checking house keys in hand before locking and so on. The bad ones are smoking, drugs, stealing, etc. Habits strangle Swatch Bharat!
Let us start with the political class where blatant sycophancy and lack of civic sense of supporters is encouraged. During elections the hoardings, posters and banners proliferating all over the place, stuck on trees, walls, electric poles, etc is a disgusting habit. Huge cut outs and hoardings of people’s leaders stare at you everywhere blocking the view, road signs and skyline. This is a cognizable offence making it mandatory for the police to register an offence. Today the law could be used to get them three months in jail or a fine up to Rs 2000. However, civic officials are reluctant to pull down banners especially political ones. There is confusion of public and private space, defacement of public and private property (which may be with permission of owner). The MPDP (Maharashtra Public Defacement of Property Act) definition has reportedly been enlarged by the High Court as “any place open to public view” and not just public places! Not many people are aware of this and cities are getting dirtier and uglier, also newspapers plastered with politician’s birthday and achievement advertisements, which practice is rampant, especially in Goa! All this is generally achieved with undeclared funds.
A Division bench of Justices AS Oka and Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi of the Bombay High Court recently said “Since a year we have been passing orders asking political parties not to put up illegal banners and posters. Nobody is abiding by the orders. They are making a mockery of us”. We in Goa have been fighting a losing battle against the multiple roadside hoardings and also futilely urging courts, our legislators and police to implement the laws and rules and the Motor Vehicle Act on this subject in vain. Some hoardings, only in South Goa on government land, were removed to hoodwink the court orders. This is one very dirty and expensive habit that even courts cannot implement without the police and the executive positive involvement. Business and private individuals follow suit and deface public and private property for advertisement without permission.
We have hordes of Indians coming to our beaches, not listening to the lifeguards, ogling and photographing the women, drinking and breaking bottles/throwing them into the sea; rudely gesturing to order the waiters, talk loudly on their mobile phones, disturb everyone around and pick up a fight if they are requested to behave. Garbage is strewn along the roadside, thrown into rivers and neighbour’s plots. Coming to sex, we have habitual moral policing gangs permitted to get violent by the authorities in some States, beating up couples in a secluded spot for merely talking. They object to lifeless mannequins in shops as objects of erotica. Some even want couples holding hands to marry each other. All this happens in the 20th century in the land of the Kamasutra and Khajuraho.
We swear by caste, astrology, superstition, ritualised religion and tolerate corruption, slums, extreme poverty and children begging on the roadside. Khap Panchayats sanction/glorify honour killing. We are always in a hurry, but rarely in time. For events to start in time are rare indeed. This is worse if a VIP is the chief guest. There continues great inequality and absurd levels of security and privileges for VIPs. We keep tolerating the arrogant VIP syndrome which is demeaning and has no place in a true democracy. Expensive garlands/bouquets of beautiful flowers are showered on them, generally wasted and unappreciated polluting/ landing up as garbage. We generally talk loudly, honk unnecessarily, drive rashly and are lacking in civic sense. The Indian wedding has become much more expensive yet more lavish. We spend more on a girls wedding than on her education.
I am not aware about the public ladies toilets, but in the gent’s urinal many have a nasty habit of not aiming straight or spitting into the urinal. Throwing things or spitting out of moving vehicles is still quite common. The municipal authorities tried painting the Panaji market wall red to cover the paan spit. These days the out shouting, speaking at the same time, intolerant debates on tolerance on television is to be seen in order to be believed. India is a country where the reserved overshadow the deserved, people fight to be labeled backward, roads are continually being dug up and resurfaced. Government departments cannot or will not coordinate. Children keep falling down open boreholes and rules are made to be broken. Justice is routinely delayed yet ours is still a democracy, which amazingly has stood the test of time.
Parents and teachers have abdicated their responsibility to inculcate non corrupt habits and civic sense by mentoring and by example. Politicians, who take the oath after election, do not honour what they have sworn! Government overruling people and acting selfishly is endemic. The “chalta hai” attitude instead of aiming for excellence is a bad habit. We have evolved to be like that only. Will globalisation and necessity slowly but surely bring change to bad habits and outdated traditions? Time alone will tell. RSS dropping traditional shorts for trousers is a start!
(The author is a retired naval officer, resident in Porvorim)
