Clean sweep
In India, especially in and around cities and towns, one often gets the impression of life being lived on one huge garbage dump. A clean sweep, that’s what India needs (also to do away with its excessive political garbage by the way). The tableau on the picture compares favourably with that image. ‘Why continue sweeping, isn’t it clean enough?’ one feels like telling the young lady.
Unlike one might think when touring the country, most people in India do value a clean spot to live on. But what to do with the waste of modern urban consumer society? For want of an adequate waste management system garbage is dumped in public space, on the road and on ‘no man’s land’, where it only too often remains. (See for example The Ugly Indian)
So the photo above doesn’t show us the complete picture. It let’s us dream of how India once was, say a hundred years ago, but also of how it again could be with a little good will of both, municipal authorities and citizens.
Photo of the week: Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, India 2007
καιρός remembered 
This is the India we like to see – the one that has not been invaded by plastic. Some have found interesting solutions for recycling even laminates (See http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-10/indias-plastic-man-chemist-turns-litter-into-paved-roads). Some concerned youth in Almora are taking on the Ugly India through the Green Hills Club.
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