Swachh Bharat mission is a good idea. But often it becomes farcical because of poor implementation as happened this morning at Bandra fort in Mumbai with a senior bureaucrat from Delhi gracing the occasion, as they say.
I saw the farce for almost two hours. When I reached for a normal walk by 7.30 a.m. a lot of tall, athletic men wearing Swachh Bharat white T shirts were furiously sweeping the area. Later, one realised they were drafted from the central reserve police force. Then came hundreds of college students from NSS national service scheme in batches and were assigned different areas for cleaning.
Am a regular visitor here and I have always found the area clean. But today a lot of garbage was seen even after the cleaning by the CRPF men. Someone had dumped it at a spot very close to the function before it began and it remained there till the end. One wonders where they found so much garbage. Ironically, it was all dumped into a barrel and much garbage lay on the ground. And this was all a few feet from the function. No one bothered. Normally the barrel and garbage are never there in the middle of the fort. The area is invariably clean.
Am a regular visitor here and I have always found the area clean. But today a lot of garbage was seen even after the cleaning by the CRPF men
The problem is these worthies, IAS and other functionaries, are always surrounded by lackeys and other types, so perhaps that is why Usha Sharma, the secretary of youth affairs from the central ministry in Delhi, failed to notice the mess when she came for the function or when she departed.
The bureaucrat clad in jeans and a white Swachh bharat T shirt administered an oath to the jawans and students, boys and girls from various colleges like National, Hinduja, Guru Nanak, Lala Lajpatrai, Thakur. They had all been standing for over an hour. Either they were given the wrong time or the bureaucrat came late in the official car with Bharat Sarkar written in front.
Perhaps there is some truth in reports that at such photo op spectacles kachra is deliberately put on the road to enable the so called VIPs to wield the broom.