MY CLEAN INDIA How it began Remco van Santen remco@mycleanindia.org tel: +61.466 976 007 27th April 2012
We need to be the change we wish to see in the world. Gandhi How it began 9 May 2004 and as a tourist I am exploring Nainital an Indian hillstation in the foothills of the Himalayas to escape the near 50 C heat in the plain below. One balmy evening, staring at some neglected British heritage buildings when I hear an Excuse me sir, I would like to ask you some questions about your visit to Nainital. I sit by the lake with a journalist from the Hindustan Times newspaper and share my reflections on this hillstation town with more than a hint of its one-time glory under British management. I comment about the lake around which the town is built described in 19 th century writings as a "crystal in the Himalayas" with water"...as clear as crystal.. but now a greenish, rubbish littered dying pool. 1 Below is an image of a section of the Eyes of Shiva as the lake is referred to by local people. That evening I shared that my heart was wrenched by the neglect of those once lovely British buildings and the state of the Mall Road in particular, that can only be described as filthy with discarded litter. What a contrast to the historical photographs I had seen. I painted a picture of what the town could look like and some off the cuff thoughts on how that could happen. The journalist taking voluminous notes for his newspaper article. I later received an email in response from a resident who had read the article pointing to my frustration being shared by others: As you know, most of us, who live in this part of the world, lack civic sense. The same also goes for Nainital I concluded something is missing to create this situation in just six decades since the British left this country. He further wrote, Naturally, we all here share part of the blame for the fast degeneration of this rare world heritage. 1 Ajay S Rawat, Deepak Singhal, Corbett s Nainital. Travails of a crumbling city Consul Printers, 1998. 1
There was indeed a serious problem in Nainital and as I experienced in the rest of India country around taking care but here people blamed others such as tourists or the authorities. Something engaged my heart in 2004 and a little later on during that round the world trip American friends were amused that after a long Greyhound bus ride, at three in the morning I was talking about that little neglected Himalayan hillstation town. Three years later 2007, feeling inspired about my experience with the concept of ontology (page 15), I returned to India for a few days. I now had an idea of how I could remove that nagging splinter in my brain by mobilising the town to do something and I would do that by a vision, a possibility I created for Nainital to reduce the neglect and apparent indifference. I smiled when I realised I left Australia on April Fools Day 2007 as this venture was a break from my past where my template for success would require me to first analyse the situation, develop a strategy, with goals and timelines and seek enabling funding. None of these prerequisites were met instead I confined myself to what were me still those quirky ontological concepts of possibility and being. I had plenty of time to reflect on the flight, a seven hour train trip and a winding dark and misty ride up to that little Himalayan hillstation of Naini Tal Lake of the goddess Naini. I squirmed how little I had to offer with no more than that possibility and a butterfly logo but with commitment fuelled by my nagging splinter. The goddess Naini weeping at the state of her lake must surely be lifting her eyebrows at this ambitious Aussie. I was dropping myself into a town knowing no one other than perhaps that journalist I had met three years earlier to achieve something that were just words to me, of community mobilisation. With no backdoor, within a few weeks I was on an 11 day return flight to Delhi carrying a possibility - of Nainital being Prosperous and Beautiful through Community. Midnight, 2 April 2007 I arrived in Nainital and crawled into a hard, musty smelling bed too exhausted to be concerned about what lay ahead. A morning stroll confirmed little had changed in those three years, streets littered, drains still used as rubbish shutes, peeling paint, drains in the lake with that greenish opaqueness typical of eutrophication from excessive phosphated laundry water runoff with bottles, bags and litter floating everywhere. Well at least the opportunity that brought me here hadn t changed so now to enrol the community into that possibility. A lead there was to be a meeting to discuss traffic management and some of the town s movers and shakers would be present. That afternoon I walked into a dimly lit room like in this photograph with my transition glasses still 2
darkened making me feel self-consciously foreign but with the Hindi discussion paused, I pulled myself together, focussed on my being and I heard myself saying Hello, Namaskar my name is Remco and I would like to share an opportunity with you. Faces stared and one politely said Please sit down and you may talk after the meeting. For the next hour or more, I listened to Hindi supposedly not hard to learn all I could relate to other than the odd introduced English word. Then all heads turned to me and I was asked again in that distinguished cultured English of What did you come here for? I had the floor, on my own, and right there and then, was the window of opportunity. There was the now, possibility for Nainital and nothing else. A deep breath, focussed on that possibility, I talked about how I came here in 2004 and saw the potential for the town taking care to not say anything negative. I talked about the countries I had visited and how special and unique Nainital really was and with so many opportunities. I discussed the possibilities for rejuvenating the town and, being aware of an hotel owners presence, how the quality of tourism could increase. I shared a range of opportunities which required a small first step for the community to become part of their team. Above all, I kept talking about Nainital being a model of inspiration for the rest of India. After half an hour of talking and exchange mostly in Hindi, I sensed polite interest but for three people, the room vacated with polite nods and smiles. Hmm not a good start I said to myself, it was optimistic for a traffic theme meeting to be interested in what I had to say. With the help of those three leftovers people from that meeting, I met with university professors, community leaders, schools and colleges, and even attended a mosque gathering with a growing group inspired by my created possibility of being prosperous and beautiful through community. Just before finally leaving Nainital, I received a formal commitment to a first step of cleaning the town and would set a date of the 18 th of September for this event being a day commemorating a deadly landslide. It would be called CUND, Clean Up Nainital Day. Relief but within a few days I was back in Australia wondering if this was going to be a rerun of my past with those non-starter great ideas of mine. I still carried my demons. Four months later, and some correspondence in between, I was back in Nainital this time with partner Di who was curious about India and this game of mine. Early morning 18 th November and the town buzzed as normal including the normal cacophony of car horns echoing across the still lake and my phone rang to let me know the main event for CUND would begin soon. I discovered 3
that day again to trust people. The community had JIT (Just in Time action) down to a very fine art with the use of mobile phones. The first sign of something actually happening was the erection of banners over the streets and to my amazement they declared those five words I carried as my possibility. Wow! In the town square with the Governor and dignitaries present, the town s Commissioner arrived in his Ambassador car with uniformed chauffeur and an audience of more than a thousand. My god, it is happening I dashed to Di! There was even a poster competition with passionate posters with prizes being awarded to the schoolchildren with a winning poster appropriately of the weeping goddess Naini. The town was buzzing alright. Oaths to keep clean were distributed and taken with groups around the town. 4
Pledges were distributed throughout the town required to be signed by groups like merchants, hoteliers and stallholder. Cars were stopped on entering the town and occupants asked to give up their plastic in exchange for paperbags and merchants began to use handmade paper bags. Then of course there was the actual cleaning initiatives some using tools donated by local merchants and the Nagar Palika (town council). Tonnes of litter were collected. 5
According to the newspapers, some six thousand people, or one-tenth of the town was in action with schools cooperating with cleaning and even prestigious and supposedly aloof Sherwood College undertook a survey of community attitudes. I reflect on some of the outcomes of Clean Up Nainital Day 18 September 2007. Passed with flying colours This is perhaps no better confirmed by an email received by me on return to Australia. My family are visitors to Nainital for the past 30 years. We enjoy an extensive familiarity with Nainital which has expectedly been always close to us. Though we are now even residing in Ramgarh,- yet visits to Nainital had become fewer by the year- largely due to its ruination caused in the name of modern day tourism, that murdered its ecology, choked its lake, and trashed its civic amenities....till we visited it last week... and saw the most pleasant change in its environment!!! Simply, the town was cleaner and measures put into place to keep it clean. Wardens were appointed to keep the lake clean and litter fines imposed announced on a green and red plaque in the town centre. Nainital meant business. 6
On-going voluntary cleaning There were teams of women cleaning especially around sources of litter outside the merchants to make a statement and those women met each month from then on. Mission Butterfly The possibility of Prosperity and Beauty through Community distinguished absent community spirit and so when the people of Nainital were enrolled into possibility it initially brought the community together to clean. Then a new possibility was distinguished including a novel solid waste management system called Mission Butterfly. What I thought was an insignificant gesture at the time, but introducing a little butterfly in a discussion paper nucleated the creation of a solid waste management program dovetailing into an existing community health services network. The women fieldworkers were enrolled by the community to extend their services to deal with new topics such as the segregation of waste into recyclables and compostables. The scheme included the segregation of waste into organics for compositing and much of the balance for a recycling plant created in nearby Kathgodam. 7
Mission Butterfly was a surprise as it evolved from community action without being driven by the local authorities - it just happened. And it happened with such enthusiasm that it overcame the anticipated resistance to a required household levy. People said the local authorities felt undermined that the community had by-passed them dealing directly with the growing problem of waste and were therefore not keen at first to support it. Most homes in Nainital however had the plaque announcing their participation in this homegrown scheme. It is stunning what can happen when people own a vision and their initiative! 8
Shoppin g bags, though being phased out in many cities, remain a litter problem so Butterfly Bags were created as a project. Groups were enrolled to knit this litter problem into decorative and functional bags. School children & creating My Clean India & My Clean School CUND activities had finished and strolling around Nainital in the evening a group of schoolgirls surprised me by asking my permission to take measures to care of litter on the main road. On the one hand I was delighted, but asking a foreigner seemed to me signalling a missing network or attitude to enable the passion to be applied. I felt like a lightning rod for their passion at that moment. Those students came from a school largely represented by what the locals called tourists and out of towners who supposedly had little interest in Nainital. That encounter and many later affirmed an absence of perceived opportunity and sometimes those students were even discouraged by their parents in class-conscious India. 2 That moment I declared I could not stop with Nainital and within an hour, helped by some coaching from Di, I declared I would not stop with Nainital and commit to ten towns and cities in India to be in action within one year. 2 Some parents even complained of insolence when their children asked them to stop littering. 9
Within 12 months, Meerut, Haldwani, Allahabad, Agra, Lucknow, Bhowali, Almora, Noida, Ajmer, Dehradun, Gangeeri were in action and beginnings in places like Chennai and Delhi. A shift in attitude. Nainital held its CUND day that 18 th of September 2007 and the town was cleaned, marched and bannered, postered, plastic bag exchanged, waste-managed and celebrated with prizes and trophies suggesting a tipping point about cleanliness was achieved. However that evening I was to question if the underlying attitude to littering and cleanliness had actually changed. The 18 th of September commemorated the Great Landslide of 1880 and dignitaries and town people who had participated in the day s clean-up attended an evening event with drinks and nibbles outside the St John of the Wilderness church. Tables were bedecked with cakes, sweets and drinks and with disposable paper plates. Di and I were astonished to see most of those plates casually being dropped on the ground. Almost instinctively, after all we are the clean-up VIPs, we picked up some 10
of those plates around us and carried them to that one distant bin. Within days we had left the country with mixed feelings but we perked up to receive emails like this. I am prepared to support you whole-heartedly with my students and students from other educational institutions. You shall not be the leader as you said, but your presume will facilitate in evolving a leadership amongst the students and schools who will participate in your noble and Samaritan venture. I am with you and my students in your great cleanliness drive. I will also rope in the Principals, staff members, students, members of the Municipal Corporation, Merchant s Association, Hotel and Restaurant Association and the people from the town for this great occasion. The bed has been prepared now, and the seeds that you have planted, as you can see, are already germinating. Returning the following year, Nainital looked markedly cleaner and painted up while the lake had its sophisticated aeration system overcoming the stagnation that had been killing fish and turning it so murky green. The Clean Up Nainital Day however was notably lower key and was more about an event for some dignitaries than about the actually doing as we had experienced. The Mission Butterfly waste management system was working and yes the town was cleaner but while the team were talking with schools it was more about extolling, requesting and making calls on civil duty to a polite but not so enthused school audience. There was a surprise coming however. As last year, in the evening I quietly joined the same group of dignitaries and students having nibbles and drinks outside that church. This time, I was thrilled to see that the evening ended with no more than a couple of plates on the ground with people now using conveniently located bins. The culture to littering had changed! The cleaner ground outside that little British era church spoke to me more than anything else that day as community-paid cleaning services can mask community indifference as seen in my own country. Outlook and developments My Clean as it evolved is about empowerment and creating space for others to be in action enrolled into the possibility of prosperity and beauty in the community. Being in action, possibility distinguished opportunities for expressing more confident leadership and for the students, to be more employable. My Clean therefore is about one s being. I found the practice of enrolment into the concept of My Clean very easy and even seemingly unlikely audiences such as Masters of business and information technology students expressed enthusiasm to be in action and with their college director offering to place My Clean India logos on their T-shirts for use in the town. Schools requested me to speak at assemblies sometimes with multiple presentations and with far more schools than I had time for. All that and yet I progressively became aware that I had stretched myself too far and perhaps dominated too much. Finding leaders who understood and were prepared to accept the concept of creating space for others to be in action enrolled into possibility proved difficult. Some said it was because India is 11
pragmatic and culturally conditioned to requesting and cajoling from the top down. 3 Attempts to find a leader to integrate activities between the active places failed and some Facilitators (as they were called) attempting a business model I was told stories about bored students and unwilling to participate schools. Despite the inevitable setbacks, there are legacies of this now five year old movement and what started in Nainital as a My Nainital movement, rippled to campaigns in a range of cities and towns, and hundreds of schools were addressed under the banner of My Clean School. I am aware of at least fifty newspapers that have covered the initiative as well as multiple TV and radio coverages. In Meerut, a My Clean Police Station campaign resulted in trophies and certificates as reward for police station cleaning up and in Ajmer the hospitals are involved. I practiced enrolment into possibility and was successful with my audience and hoped that the leaders, the Facilitators, could learn by observing me at work. Yet while I always spoke in the presence of Facilitators, prepared detailed documentation and guidelines and reviewed my presentations afterwards, it became clear the concept of creating possibility and creating space for others to be in action was not applied very well, if it was understood. I live in Australia, and communicating by scratchy phone or email just wasn t the same as face to face. At the bottom of my emails I quoted Gandhi s We must be the change we wish to see in the world. Observing the entrenched pattern of cajoling people into action, I changed that to The leader s main job is to make themselves obsolete. Lao Tsu. Bluntly put, I failed to train leaders into the ontology of possibility with only limited time in India, I made a trade-off for number of cities and towns. Noting some resistance to the concept of My Clean in Nainital, possibly because it may be seen as a foreign initiative, not helped by me wearing an akubra hat in a country where hats are associated with foreigners, I am now committing to 3 The nature of India was evident immediately on arrival in India with the announcement of the Delhi airport public address system of You are requested to collect your bags at carrousel no.x where the more common expression uses available. I noticed how pliant people were to touts outside restaurants guiding people to a particular restaurant. 12
another visit to India to promote the concept of hubs, possibly called Healing Hubs starting in Nainital. Perhaps the offering of part scholarships to encourage Landmark course participation will help build leaders understanding possibility and enrolment. External outcomes aside, I have learned as much about myself as about the people of India to whom I once had an attitude but now respect. It is tempting to identify cultural differences as a pointer to outcome and while it no doubt contributed including their pragmatism and perceptions of personal freedom, the overall impression was that the people at their core are the same as in Australia. Like here it was the stories they tell themselves that inhibited people to be in action. Success and failure came back to myself and my focus. I spent too much focus on presenting myself as the enroller, not enough in practising with the leaders. Perhaps too, six-week visits to so many places in India was simply too optimistic and it would have been better to focus on Nainital s leadership to ensure the nucleus of My Clean was healthy, stimulating and sustaining. As for myself, I learned to speak without notes or prior preparation and from that place of abandonment, I found I could engage an audience for longer periods making a shift in my presentations from talking about cleanliness to an exciting opportunity for them to practice leadership in their community. The young people who heard me seemed to get the message but they needed skilled facilitators to represent the lightning rods for their enthusiasm and passion to flow. Other young people heard messages about calls to conscience and duty and reports came back to me about eyelids dropping teachers had become busy. But sometimes a movement goes a little flat in the process of finding its natural course, and so perhaps we are seeing that happening in 2012 as on 28 April I received an email from a new place Ghaziabad, near Delhi; I am glad to inform you that the "My Clean Ghaziabad" project has started. We have added additional tag line to the "My Clean Ghaziabad - Flower City" and it has been taken well by schools and colleges. Reported also at http://tinyurl.com/7wd9k8d They are well and truly in action. 13
What is My Clean India? My Clean India is a network to empower people, especially the youth. It promotes opportunities for action and acknowledges those that contribute to the spirit of My Clean which is for a prosperous and beautiful environment created and nurtured by a supportive community. That community can be your family, friends, schools, groups, towns or cities. Your opportunity, perhaps a life-changing challenge, is to create leaders to inspire your community under the My Clean banner. Acknowledgement. My Clean India represents a banner and a creator of space for students, people and organisations to be in action and to be acknowledged for their achievements. My Clean creates and supports champions and to practice leadership, your role can be to choose to be the wind beneath their wings. So for you My Clean is your opportunity to step out and find ways to inspire others in your passion. Discover from that experience that you will live life more joyfully and successfully! Problems are opportunities. My Clean believes that any neglect of our environment such as littering, is simply a symptom of poor community spirit and a personal feeling of disempowerment. It therefore aims to empower people to choose, to take action, and to own the outcome - to create a we did that!. My Clean nurtures the seeds [what is good and working] to displace those weeds [that litter/mess]). For students in particular, it represents opportunities to practice leadership and develop the feeling and confidence that we can all make a difference. My Clean knows that we can be the change that Gandhji referred to. 14
Why am I writing this? I am sharing this for people who may feel challenged to accept my late observation that effective communication and relationships are subtly but powerfully shaped by one s being and less than by written words. I am reminded by; People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel."- Maya Angelou The epistemological paradigm for education and communication is a process of increasing knowledge. 4 The focus of an ontological approach has a broader view as it: Focusses on our way of being human, rather than from what we know the being of human beings, rather than human knowledge. Addresses the unexamined background of assumptions about the function and possibility of knowledge. Inquires deeply into the possibility that our understanding of the world is constituted in language rather than from an objective reality. Accepts the relationship of the being to language is intimate but elusive - being hints and allows something to be glimpsed that cannot be grasped. Acknowledges that conversation that does not fade is about possibility meaning that whatever it is that s possible and does not now exist, can exist. It is possible Creating Space Metaphor gives the world meaning and helps determine how we see. Metaphor is therefore the growing point of language and so by generating new metaphors, we create new ontological possibility the creation of space. This is not a new concept as it recognised that philosophers have significance not in what they have thought, but in the space they have distinguished for us to be and this requires questions that are open. Space provides for insight and that always implies a contextualising question and behind answers is an infinite dialogue in questioning and so everything said stands in such space. So while a question engages us, an answer closes the space. Living a question, we confront phenomena in a particular way and standing authentically as a question, one is open to the situation and present to its possibilities. Remco van Santen Remco Van Santen is a director of the chemical industry consultancy Chemlink pty ltd with degrees in science and economics, and a masters degree in business administration. Through his consultancy 4 Epistemology means the study of knowledge and science and is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? To what extent is it possible for a given subject or entity to be known? 15
he has worked for state and federal governments, transnationals, and Asian countries. He has chaired conferences and been keynote speaker in Australia and Asia, a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and Chair of their Industrial Chemistry Division, Fellow Australian Institute of Company Directors and on various industry boards and committees. In more recent years he has trained and practised as a personal development coach. He is a father of three children and lives in Perth, the capital of Western Australia. Today he is passionately committed to the young people who he sees as having the potential to correct the problems in the environment and live in a more satisfying way. He says we oldies have created the problems, it is the younger generation with the passion that can be the change we want. He started the My Clean concept after a visit to the hill station Nainital in Uttarakhand where he was disappointed by people pointing to others as the reason for the littering and neglect. Today as a result of a one week visit in 2007, Nainital has a solid waste program, is cleaner and groups of women volunteers keep the spirit alive. He would have stopped there if not approached by a group of senior students seeking permission from him, as a foreigner, to take charge of the main road in Nainital and ensure it is kept clean. Touched by their passion and sensing their frustration, Remco committed to the My Clean campaign and today he spends time to support others achieve his vision of a Prosperous and Beautiful Environment through real community spirit. In addressing schools, he hopes the students will graduate feeling proud of their school and for the teachers to feel that My Clean represents important leadership training without adding to their workload or distracting from the important core scholastic education. He has addressed more than one hundred schools with requests to return. Remco is inspired by people like Gandhiji, Swami Vivekananda and JD Krishnamurti and feels India can be a role model for the world of what is possible with community spirit and acceptance. 16