Wed, Oct 08, 2003 page5

• Cleanliness drive aims to spruce up New Delhi streets

  • AP
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  The park had been scrubbed to near-spotlessness by the time the politicians arrived, and the nearby alleys cleared of garbage. Even the suddenly well-swept dirt wasn't, well, very dirty.

  At least for one day.

  In a city that often seems to be drowning in its own trash, an obscure neighborhood park was the recent scene of New Delhi's "Clean City" campaign, a 10-day festival of parades, posters and pledges of cleanliness.

  For that one day, this little corner of New Delhi was immaculate -- specially tidied up for the politicians' visit. The rest of the city? For the most part, "clean" was not the word that came to mind.

  "If Delhi was described as a rotting pile of garbage one would not be off the mark," said an article in the Times of India newspaper, in a fairly typical description of this city's filthiness.

  Every day, this city of 13 million people produces anywhere from 7,000 to 12,000 tonnes of trash. At best, perhaps 6,000 tonnes of that is disposed of properly. The rest has to go somewhere -- and alleyways, streets, parks and even ancient monuments are common dumping grounds.

  It's not just trash. Human waste is a big problem in a city where millions of people have no access to toilets. In the poorest slums, streets serve as open-air toilets, and even in the nicest neighborhoods some street corners, long used as public urinals, can choke passers-by with a fog of urine stench.

  But perhaps the most astonishing thing about New Delhi's dirtiness is that it's less than it was. Street cleaners wielding straw brooms are a more familiar sight today than a few years back, and special magistrates now patrol the city's streets, handing out fines for public urination and littering. There are even a few more toilets.

  Much of the credit, her backers say, goes to Sheila Dikshit, who as New Delhi's chief minister is the city's top official and the equivalent of its mayor.

  Her latest campaign, the Clean City program, wasn't intended to leave the streets spotless, she says, but with hundreds of children marching through neighborhoods carrying posters and chanting slogans, maybe it will change a few attitudes.

  "I'm not expecting a miracle, but I'm certainly expecting to get people's attention," she said in an interview.

  Dikshit, who has served as chief minister for the past five years, arrived at the park in the Sarita Vihar neighborhood to lead the schoolchildren in the campaign's six pledges, including, "I won't throw garbage in the street" and "I will not urinate in the street, in a park, or in the open."

  So were any attitudes changed during the just-finished campaign? Around the suddenly-clean Sarita Vihar park, few thought so.

  "What is this going to accomplish?" asked a neighborhood woman who asked to be identified only as Kirin, waving at streets she said would still be dirty if Dikshit and her colleagues had not attended the rally.

  "I just wish the politicians would visit more regularly," she said, "so then it would be cleaned more regularly."
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