India is a vast, culturally vibrant nation known for its diversity and richness. Welcome to all the teachers and students gathered here today. The beauty of India cannot be captured in a few sentences or in pictures. However, we have another side to it as well. The cleanliness issue is one of the problems that tourists face in India. With these concerns growing by the years and the economic development on the other side, cleaning India has become an important priority.
Clean India is a part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan that was launched a few years back. A clean environment has several benefits to the individual and society.
Clean environments prevent diseases and more than that provide for a positive environment to thrive and grow. It is psychologically pleasing. Dirty environments can be potential sources of stress as well. A clean society is healthier and diseases free. Cleanliness is a mark of development. It would make India more tourist-friendly and also prevents economic losses due to health concerns and other sanitation concerns that it might raise.
The reasons for why many parts of India are unclean come from certain factors within the system. Poverty and population are important factors. We have a dense population leads to a lot of waste generation. The lack of proper waste management practices make is difficult to process and dispose the large amounts of waste generated. The attitudes and awareness regarding waste disposal, hygiene and sanitation are causes of concern. Often, the attitudes of people make them choose improper modes of waste disposal.
Making India clean can be a difficult task but it is not impossible. The major task ahead is to bring about an attitudinal change. This was one of the main goals of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The Prime Minister set ahead an online challenge urging people to promote cleanliness in the surrounding. People need to be educated and aware of the extent to which our environment and societies can be made cleaner and how that would benefit us in the long run. Information about the need and the benefits can create changes in the attitude of the people. Proper waste management practices also need to be developed by the municipal and state authorities to be able to provide sustainable ways of disposing the voluminous waste generated.
As a conclusion of to this speech, I would like to state that clean India is an ideal that will benefit everyone. It may be difficult to attain but with collective effort, by changing attitudes and changing our practises we as individuals can contribute to it one trash can at a time.
By Swetha (2019)