Less than a year to go till the Commonwealth Games kick off in Delhi and the Home Minister is requesting Delhites to start behaving themselves. However, what constitutes good behaviour is not clearly defined. He made references to using overpasses while crossing roads, not spitting on streets (is that even possible?) and observing traffic rules. I am amused that he had to remind Dilliwallahs that they live in a metropolitan city and not in a village. For all you know, village folk may be a whole lot cleaner than us city folk. In Delhi, like most other big cities, people care about themselves, their families, their homes and their cars. So waste management simply translates to cleaning up one's home and dumping the rubbish across the fence. If a neighbour ever catches you in the act, some juicy words are always on hand. Here I am referring to the educated-richer-Delhi resident who usually has an average of three cars lined up against his front gate and does not pass any opportunity to pick a fight with a fellow resident. These are the same ones who have access to The Hindustan Times and NDTV and may be aware of what the HM had to say.
A colleague at work suggested that it was not enough to talk about behaviour change but it needed to be supplemented with awareness programmes. He asked how a poor rickshawallah in Old Delhi would know how to behave 'well'. I agree with him and I do believe these 'changes' need to be made but they could be made despite the big Games coming to town. For a city whose streets are polka-dotted with spit balls, it might not be such a bad deal to teach people to be discrete with their bodily fluids. Maybe even from a public health perspective. Games or no-Games lets try and make our capital city a little cleaner.
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