Thatched House

For Monday Column in Eastern Mirror. At Dimapur, Photo: Caisii Mao (demotix.com ) ‘India is a country where Atomic Age and near Stone Age people co-exist’. PK Jha ‘You can take a horse to the river, but you can’t make it drink’. Dustbins can be provided in public places by community decision, but how do we make individuals throw waste into those bins and not elsewhere? That question is literally worth lakhs of rupees even for a small State like Nagaland. World Bank estimates that India loses Rs. 24,000 crores annually due to poor hygiene and lack of toilets. Rs. 17,000 crores are spent on the cost of treatment due to illness from insanitary conditions and 4.5 lakh people die from such diseases every year. It is estimated that Rs. 1,000 crores are lost from tourism revenues because travelers find India to be too dirty. The infamous ‘ Delhi Belly ’ is the term referred to illnesses acquired from eating Indian food! Last month, I saw two empty Mazaa (drinks) packets flew out of a s...

Published in Eastern Mirror as 'We are a dirty people...' Nagas look different, eat different, and behave different from mainland Indians, but if there is a similarity between the two, it is that we are both dirty peoples. A sense of cleanliness does not come with university education. This conclusion I arrived at as I see the PhD scholars’ eating behavior in my hostel mess hall. This was an interesting observation as I was doing my studies in Public Health and had the honor of eating with Masters, Mphil and PhD students from various disciplines at JNU, New Delhi. Some of them would ‘plough’ through their plate like a paddy field while some would eat with both feet ‘perched’ like birds on the benches. No amount of teaching could make them throw used paper cups into the dustbins just 6 feet away. Also a sense of cleanliness does not come with increase in wealth. Many poor families do not have the ‘luxury’ of running taps in their homes while the rich can have surplus to water th...