Clean India Green India is an initiative under the Swacch Bharat Mission launched by the honorable PrimeMinister.
India is a country with a variegated culture and heritage. The world looks up to India when it comes to spirituality and tranquility. People around the world come to India in search of peace.
But, there is one thing that distinguishes India from the rest of the world, and it is the quality of cleanliness in our towns and cities. People of India are very fond of traveling abroad. They come up with the beauty and cleanliness they have seen in other cities and discuss how unclean our country is.
What is Cleanliness?
Cleanliness is the state of being clean and free from dirt and maintaining this state. Cleanliness is the prerequisite to avail higher qualities of health and beauty. Every faith and civilization stresses the importance of cleanliness as a tradition. In the Hindu religion, it is mandatory to wash hands and feet before worshipping God. Muslims Perform Wazu(washing hands, feet, and mouth before prayer ) before their prayers.
Clean India Green India Slogan
Our Prime Minister noticed this problem of uncleanliness and tried to resolve it. They started a mission called the Swachh Bharat Mission, which aims to bring cleanliness to our entire country. Clean India Green India slogan has become the slogan of change since the Swatch Bharat Mission initiated. It is designed to work as a complementary program with Swachh Bharat Mission.
The cleanliness mission started by Mr. Narendra Modi has helped India greatly in the corona crisis. We should be thankful to him for the initiatives like Clean India, Green India, and demonetization that have helped us during the Corona crisis.
Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi believed in absolute cleanliness. He believed that ‘Cleanliness is God’. He was so strict with cleanliness that he started cleaning immediately if he found anything dirty.
India has a population of around 1.3 billion. More than 3 million people live in towns and cities which are heavily populated. Most of the towns and cities are not able to manage the garbage generated by its residents. One of the biggest reasons is the carefree nature of the people and lack of awareness towards deteriorating environmental conditions and its widespread effect on the environment as a whole.
Water pollution, inadequate drinking water, lack of proper sanitation, open dumping of waste, and deforestation are other related issues.
These issues have serious consequences. It results in various air and water-borne diseases. Unhealthy living conditions lead to a less productive population, which, in turn, becomes an economic burden to the country.
Immediate attention is required in the matter of environmental imbalance.
Swacch Bharat Mission
Swachh Bharat Mission is a nation-wide campaign in India that aims to clean up the streets, roads of Indian cities, towns, and rural areas. The greenery helps in reducing the pollution in the air and also reduces the disasters in the nation.
The forest cover helps in maintaining the ecological balance of the nation. People are being updated as needed to take the matter of cleanliness seriously. They clean the environment every day and also dispose of the garbage in a correct manner. The small steps, like collecting dry waste and wet waste separately, can reduce land pollution to a great extent.
Global Warming is another serious problem. This is extremely bad in metro cities but also equally harmful to the people who live in rural areas. This problem has one simple solution, i.e., is to grow more and more trees and keep the environment free from harmful emissions.
Also Read: Minerals and Energy Resources
Role of people
People have started growing plants and trees around them to prevent global warming as the trees help to overcome the number of greenhouse gases in the air. There are various forest cover developments and increase the number of trees in the cities to fight against various environmental problems.
There is a famous proverb that says Charity begins at home. We all know the beginning of anything needs a kick start. The best way, to begin with, is by cleaning our own house, room, kitchen, and society. The next important task is preserving greenery. United, we can definitely make a difference. Mass forestation drive, promoting the use of green fuels, minimizing the use of fossil fuels can solve this problem. We can use other alternative and renewable sources of fuels available.
People can take care of a few basic steps, like carrying a recycle bag for shopping. This will reduce the consumption of disposable bags. Similarly, we can encourage the use of reusable bottles, cups, etc. Recycled materials should be used more and more to reduce the fuel and energy involved in making new material.
Composting at home reduces the volume of garbage. This will reduce landfills and reduces the chance of some products becoming marine debris.
We can easily increase greenery by not cutting trees, which further avoids desertification. Every household can grow their plants and also certain vegetables which can easily be grown at home. One can get fresh pesticide-free vegetables and also reduce the carbon footprint. It also helps in reducing air pollution and the greenhouse effect locally.
Role of Government
The government also plays an important role in keeping India clean and green. The government must make strict rules for the protection of the forest belt near every city or town. It needs to keep a check on toxic emissions of industries, the installation of toxic smoke and effluent treatment plants must be mandatory at every industrial unit.
The government sanctions loans for the purpose of building toilets. In addition to that, they also subsidized the cost of the required materials and connected the borrowers to contractors so that they could easily finish the process. The government has altered its economic and energy policies to make them environmentally friendly responsible.
Solid municipal wastes may be disposed of in proper and scientific ways that through the proper system of elimination and disposal. The observation of doing away with open shitting also will guarantee an increase within the quality of the environment in rural areas. It can bring with it an awareness and concern of their environmental surroundings, and also, the country will have the benefit of this modified state of mind of the village folks.
Renewable energy sources are being subsidized while small hydropower projects are being undertaken to power rural areas. Some governments like Delhi had banned the sale of firecrackers on Diwali.
Plastic Pollution
Plastic pollution has become one of the biggest problems in the world. It is rapidly increasing. The increasing production of disposable plastic products is creating baggage for the world. Plastic pollution is most visible everywhere, from packaging to carry bags. Garbage collection is insufficient in India as wet and dry garbage is put together.
Plastics offer convenience as it is cheaper and water-resistant. However, its low price led to a throw-away culture that is the reason for its overuse. Single-use plastics account for 40 percent of the plastic produced every year. Many of these products, such as plastic bags and food wrappers, have a small lifespan, yet they remain in the environment for hundreds of years.
The plastic waste, if it lands inland, creates landfills, and if we burn them, it becomes the reason for air pollution and the reason behind lung-related diseases. This is probably one of the biggest challenges to Clean India Green India.
The solution is to prevent plastic waste from entering rivers and seas. Scientists are continuously researching to build new material as equally useful as plastic. They are also trying to find how to dispose of plastic so that its harmful effects cn be removed to plastic. Recycling, better product design, and reduction in the manufacturing of single-use plastics can help in easing out the problem to some extent.
Reduce Reuse and Recycle
Reducing needs can lead to a peaceful life and a peaceful environment. If you think in solitude, you will realize that most of your own stuff is not something you cannot leave without. So reducing the needs is the best mantra to achieve Clean India and Green India.
Buying new things every now and then encourages production, wastes your resources, and creates more generative waste than you can imagine. Always make sure that you bring what you consume. Be more artistic and imaginative to reuse the stuff that you already own. Reuse is another great mantra.
Recycle your plastic mobile batteries’ electronic goods so that the pressure created on the environment to produce more is eased somewhat. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
They are not that hard to implement. All you need is to bring a small change in your daily life to reduce waste so that less amount of it goes to the landfill that can reduce your carbon footprint.
Clean India Green India Program
The Clean India Green India aims to bridge the gap between government policies and people. The mission was started with the objective of making people aware of health and education through awareness programs. Clean India Green India slogan is meant to arouse a sense of awakening into the citizens of India for keeping their surroundings clean and thereby keeping the country clean.
Clean India Green India means if we clean the environment, it will be followed by a green environment. A green environment means an environment that is free from garbage, sewage, and pollution.
Clean India Green program is scientific, structured, holistic, and effective. It is structured in a scientific manner educating the students and youth so that the generation in itself will be aware of the importance of cleanliness and pass it to the next generation. The methods of teaching are scientific and activity-based, so they are easy to assimilate and learn.
Clean India Green India is based on the collaboration of schools, institutes, and NGOs. Numerous students are affiliated with the Clean India Green India mission who participates in various environmental activities and for cleaner India.
The main theme under the Clean India Green India Program is
- Sanitation
- Land conservation
- Biodiversity conservation
- Air Quality improvement
- Green energy
- Reduction of carbon footprints as a whole
- Checking climate change factors
The partners perform activities based on these themes to arouse public awareness.
Clean India Tools
Carbon Calculator
This Carbon Calculator developed by Development Alternatives helps in the estimation of the household’s carbon footprint in terms of kilograms of CO2 emitted per year.
The idea of a carbon calculator is that it helps to quantify the personal carbon footprint and its impact on climate change. The calculator helps in measuring one’s greenhouse gases(GHG) emissions and also suggests simple ways in which we can reduce our carbon footprint. Many people opted for greener options like energy-efficient devices and made simple changes in lifestyles as a step towards mitigating climate change.
Jal Tara
The Jal Tara water kit is used for testing water outside the chemistry lab. The kit can check the following water parameters, i.e., pH, temperature, turbidity, and hardness. It can also check chemical parameters such as arsenic, chloride, fluoride, iron, nitrate, residual chlorine, dissolved oxygen, phosphorous, and ammonia.
It can also check the presence of bacteria and other microbes. They are
lightweight and field-ready and have elegant leak-proof cases.
Pawan-Tara
Pawan-TARA is an easy to operate, portable and compact air quality monitoring kit developed by Development Alternatives.
It is used for testing three parameters of air- sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, and particulate matter.
Pawan-TARA is used to monitor outdoor air quality at traffic junctions, market places, residential areas, industrial areas, and indoor air quality at the workplace environment in industrial complexes, hotels, kitchens, homes. The kit is equipped with reagents for semi-quantitative estimation of gaseous pollutants (SO2 and NOx).
Tara Mini Paper Recycling Machine
A mini paper recycling plant is developed for the recycling of waste paper. The TARA mini paper recycling plant ensures complete recycling of waste paper and cotton rags into useful and valuable products.
The plant is designed to produce products like stationery, certificates. gifts and exciting paper products like lampshades, bins, pencil holders, etc. These mini cycling plants can be installed in schools.
Aqua testing Vials
TARA Aquacheck vials are a revolutionary tool developed by TARA Laboratories that can test the presence of pathogenic bacteria in the water, which causes common water-borne diseases. It is highly reliable and very simple to use, even by students.
Digital Water Quality Map
This is a great tool for measuring the water Quality developed under the Clean India Green India slogan. The tool has experimented with within Delhi.
They conducted water quality monitoring for more than four years for three seasons in a year in Delhi through this kit. This enabled to identify the areas where water is consistently found contaminated. A number of water samples were collected from a spot in each area to find the contamination, which ensures representation of the entire area. All the samples were analyzed to identify the extent of the contamination.
A detailed database was created based on the data called the interactive Geomatics Information System (GIS) based digital water quality map. The water quality map displays the municipal and groundwater quality for different areas in Delhi, Noida, and Gurgaon.
A cumulative index for the water quality has been prepared, which helps the database to grade the quality of water through colors like green color says safe for use, yellow color says check before use, and red color says purify before use.
To sum up, Clean India green India slogan will remain a slogan until every Indian citizen does not join hands with the much-needed mission. People end up blaming the government for every issue. Sure, they are responsible for looking after the people and the country’s needs, but taking care of a country of more than one million is not an easy task. Can a mother look after five children at the same time? She will definitely, but the quality will be compromised.
Similarly, all of us should join hands with each other and make our India Clean India and Green India. Let’s strive to make the Father of the nation and our honorable Primeminister’s dream come true very soon.