Sunday, January 11, 2009

Personal responsibility

So I was talking to a relative who is on her first-ever visit to the US. She was amazed by the cleanliness. "There are neat little garden in front of every house and they are all so well-maintained. All houses have identical roofs and even the roofs are so clean!" she gushed. "The government must either be really good at maintaining everything or the laws about keeping things clean must be really strict, no?" She added.

I didn't say anything because I was not in a mood to lecture, but no, it is not the government. There is no "cleanliness police" going around cuffing people the instant they litter. Things are clean because littering, and people who litter, are frowned upon. It is the culture of the place - people like to keep their houses, their yards, their streets and their neighborhood clean, and do it themselves rather than waiting for the government to do it.

I had met another family member in India on my recent trip, and mentioned that my daughter was playing soccer in a league. She remarked "see that is why they have America is so good in sports, the government has such good sports programs." I had to point out that the government has nothing to do with it. The soccer league is organized by parents and for most part is managed by parents. The coaches are all parents that volunteer for the job and coach in their spare time.

That is when it struck me. The reason why India hasn't developed, (it hasn't, you ask. I can go into that in another blog or a book!) and still looks like a 3rd world country is exactly because of that mind-set. Complete ignorance of personal and civic responsibility and the expectation that the government will and should take care of everything. If we had more people such as my friend V, India might be a different place. When she sees a luxury car throwing litter out of its windows in the street of New Delhi, she chases down the car and tells the occupants what they just did. Unfortunately, many don't take her seriously, or say "what difference will another water bottle make" and never once feel a need to change their habits. You know, government is supposed to keep the streets clean!

2 comments:

Fran Loosen said...

I love your blog! I have a thought about the cleanliness and personal responsibility post, though. Growing up in Oklahoma as a child, everyone threw EVERYTHING out the window. Litter was everywhere and if we had had as many people as Indian cities do, it would have been 1,000,000 times worse. And these were farmers whose livelihood depended on the land! Litter was huge problem in the US. You wouldn't believe it now, but it was disgusting. But they started a series of public service announcements in the US aimed at stopping litter, most famously the Don't Mess With Texas campaign that struck just the right chord of pride and personal responsibility with people. It was sponsored by the government, but was a great illustration of the right message at the right time. Australia did the same thing with getting parents not to smoke around their kids and to conserve water and "turn off the tap" to save water in a terrible 5 year drought they were having. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is hope, that it's really a combination of people having to learn better behaviors. They don't come up with it on their own, even in the most "developed" countries. It's figuring out the psyche of the people whose behaviors you are trying to change.

So, there is hope. It's a process of people becoming proud of the results they see and how those results affect them both directly and indirectly. :)

Alien Mama said...

Fran,
I agree with you that the size of the Indian population makes everything much harder. And yes, the government has a role to play - the government's campaign to reduce family size, to get all children vaccinated for polio, etc. have been quite effective. I do envision a "frown-campaign" having an affect on littering; bringing things to a stage where a certain act is looked down upon by the society in general that people feel ashamed in doing it - kissing in public is a good example for India. There has been some progress in that some states have banned plastic bags. Littering is, however, a huge problem and with the growing population, and growing consumerism I see the amount of trash only mounting. Add to that the fact that India doesn't have spare tracts of land for use as landfills, I think India could end up looking like the place in the movie Wall-E if the tide isn't swung the other way soon.