WHY SHOULD WE PARTICIPATE IN SWACHH BHARAT ABHIYAN

This blog intends to give a path forward to all Indian citizens on how Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan can be brought to success.  

Rohit Malshe, PhD

INTENDED AUDIENCE	All citizens of India. All major campaigners of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. All volunteers of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. All stake holders of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
PURPOSE	This document explains and gives a general path forward to achieve success in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
PRE-REQUISITS	Enthusiasm. Second thing is knowledge of best known methods.    Any knowledge that has been acquired by means of habits, practice, and school or on job learning that can make this task easier. Volunteering. An open mind set for adopting and embracing a change. Supporting the people who are behind the cause.
OVERVIEW	The document flows in bullets that are in somewhat a sequence. The document can be first studied in its entirety, and then a project plan should be made for a task at hand. Groups or sub groups should be able to take advantage of the knowledge material therein.
EXTENDING THE LEARNING	The procedures captured in this document should be captured as learning, so that others can learn from them quickly. It is very important to come up with the simplest methods that can be copied exactly by others. Cleaning an entire city is a highly mechanical task in absence of heavy automation and facilities available, and can make anyone very tired in just a few minutes to an hr.  Therefore it is essential to extend the learning to others, so that they can use it as much as possible and make the biggest possible impact in the least amount of time.
CAPTURING GENERAL ISSUES	General issues must be captured in a FREQUENTLY-ASKED-QUESTIONS section to provide accurate replies. Wherever applicable, real life examples must be provided. If in the process one comes up with a best known method, the same must be uploaded as an additional aid for other volunteers to use in future.

WHY SHOULD WE DO IT?	Why should every Indian participate in this campaign?  Clean India (Swachh Bharat) has a huge potential to succeed. While the investment on this project is of the order of 62000 crores, the returns from this project could be manifold. When your house is clean, you like to spend time in your house. When the roads and parks are clean, you like to go out and do things. An unclean place brings a lot of discouragement to do anything. So when the country is unclean, it discourages and hampers a lot of other things. Many of these things have to do with healthcare, economic growth, costlier real estate, congestion, discouragement and overall lack of enthusiasm. Let us count these things that are impacted by cleanliness. The list includes but is not limited to: Direct healthcare costs:  Unclean streets and cities lead to problems of proper sanitation and therefore results in increase of many common diseases. Indian hospitals are therefore almost always overloaded for common diseases. Many of these diseases can be prevented by just keeping the cities clean. Indirect healthcare costs:  Unclean roads, cities, parks discourage people from exercising, which leads to many other diseases which could be cardiovascular, diabetes and so on. Pollution:  Smoke as well as dust leads to a lot of pollution in the air. Today, multiple cities in India are heavily polluted. Pollution causes a lot of health related side effects. The pollution related with dust can be significantly reduced, if the roads are kept clean and the areas that have free dust can be covered with nets and grass.   Traffic congestion:  A lot of space on both sides of the roads, such as pavements, is often not used properly thereby decreasing the real road available for traffic. Many patches on the road that comprise of unclean spots heavily under-utilize the roads. A lot of this space can be recovered back if the existing pavements and paths can be cleaned, so that they can be used by pedestrians. Economic growth:   A good road system is a huge resource behind transportation; therefore it impacts the economic growth of multiple cities. Mental barriers:  Unsightly scenes, smell and so on for people using the roads causes a very negative impression, and takes away the enthusiasm for many other things.  Safety:  Cleaner roads are safer roads that prevent scooters skidding, pedestrians being run over by cars/trucks etc.  The dirt and dust often covers the road markers thus leading to a lot of accidents during the night time.
WHAT FAILS AND WHY DID WE FAIL IN THE FIRST PLACE?	Failure of numbers and mentality: Let us assume that 1 % people in a city are constantly working on cleaning it up and 1% population is optimum to do this task. If 99 % of the remaining population is contributing to spreading the dirt and waste in unwanted places, one would continue to need the 1 % people to do this job continually. Day after day, year after year. Next year, as the population grows up, the ratio of 99 % to 1 % will go up further to 99.1 % and 0.9 %. Now, it would be harder for the 0.9 % people to do the same job, because it needs 1 % people to do this job. Next year, if the ratio goes up to 99.2, and 0.8 %, it would be even harder. Continuing on this trend, if this trend goes up to 99.5 % and 0.5 %, now we have half the number of people to do the same job. As soon as this happens, accumulation of dirt will begin at unwanted places. Soon more and more dirt would be accumulated at places leading to real roads, parks, and other facilities are going under-utilized. Going with this trend, the problem has a potential to only multiply Think about the ratios: If 99 % of people do not create the dirt in the first place, the 1 % would not have to work hard to maintain it. If 1 % of those 99 % actually participate in this campaign, the 1 % will now become 2 %, and this task can be done in half the time. But on the other hand, if those 99 % create twice as much dirt, it would need twice as many people to clean it up. The most essential thing every single Indian can do to participate in this biggest campaign is to NOT CREATE extra dirt. In fact if possible, clean up some dirt. If we continue to create extra dirt, no campaign like this will ever succeed, and we will go back to the same problem within a year or two.
HOW DO WE PREVENT FAILURES?	First it is important to come up with all the failure modes, and then they can be solved. In such a model, prevention is 99 times better than the cure, because of the shear ratio of how many people should do the job of cleaning. Mentality:  All of us have to ensure that we absolutely do not “create” any extra dirt. It cannot be done by just 80 % of the people. It has to be done by 100 % of the people.  The ratio of people who create dirt to those who clean it up is 99:1, therefore if even one person out of the 99 creates twice as much dirt we would need two people to clean it up. This model can simply not be sustained. Not adding to unwanted waste and littering it is the biggest possible contribution every single person can make to the campaign. If you are not cleaning up anything, it is ok as long as you do not add anything to it. Assuming the mentality can be changed, and can be shifted towards using designated waste areas, second most important thing to be done is to come up with maintained designated dustbins. If the designated waste/dirt disposal dustbins are not placed, the problem will return back in its original form in just a few months. Designated areas for waste disposal: The campaign would have to create designated areas for dirt/waste disposal. In absence of these areas, one would not be able to hold on to the waste, and he would be on a look out for a place that already looks dirty, and he would throw it there. This has to be discouraged by creating designated areas of voiding waste/dirt. This can be achieved by putting dust bins at regular intervals on the roads and places where people visit frequently and dirt/waste is created. Calculation of # of designated dustbins: If a city has 35000 kms of road, one would need about ~ 17000 dustbins, one every two kms. If strategically placed, the placement of dustbins can be highly optimized. Calculation of frequency of collecting dirt from dustbins: Furthermore, frequency of how quickly the dustbins refreshed should be calculated.  There should be garbage collection trucks that would be able to tour all the dustbins periodically, and collect the garbage out of them. There should be owners of those garbage collection dustbins who would make sure that they are being maintained and are not over flooded. It would be possible to monitor the weight/volume that has been collected in the dustbins by cheap sensors, or cheap surveillance cameras. The number of garbage collection trucks that a city would have to own can be highly optimized.  In addition, there should be designated people to maintain a few dirt/dustbins on a daily to weekly basis. One of the most important things to be done is – any area such as a Chat Thela, or similar, have to ensure that there is a dustbin around that place, so that people can get rid of waste easily and the owner of the place would have to maintain the cleanliness and maintenance of the dustbin.
HOW TO MASSIVELY CLEAN ROADS	˜This can be achieved by a combination of Manual work + automation. Manual work has to do with a few people working with brooms, spades, and similar things to clean up a street manually. They can collect the dirt and dust to one place at regular intervals, which can then be picked up by pickup trucks. Automatic trucks can be hired that would collect dirt from the bins without requiring manual assistance. While the first manual task can be possibly done by getting industrial vacuum cleaners, their cost would be very high. However, if the dirt has been collected, automatic trucks that pick it up can be efficient and cheap. Assigning manual work: First a little training plan should be developed, and it should be calculated that a team of 50 people can work for 4 hours to clean a part of street. It is essential that anyone who volunteers learns within 10 to 20 minutes what has to be done, and then implements it for next 4 hours. A training plan can be just shown in a video and assistants who are trained can supervise the volunteers and tell them if they are doing something wrong.  A team of 50 people can be sub divided into groups of 5 thus cleaning up 1 to 2 kms of a stretch in about 4-5 hours depending on the amount of work that has to be done. If it is not done this way, a lot of time might be wasted in training and not doing it right, or a lot of time may be wasted because of not doing the things effectively (Example: Person following wrong ergonomics may work hard and achieve less). The training should include details about hazardous waste, compostable waste and recyclable waste. Achieving Automation Dirt/waste pickup trucks exist in the world, and it can be calculated that under a stipulated budget how many trucks would be needed to maintain and sustain a city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_truck If this number is currently sub optimum, then it should be calculated what the optimum number is for any city, then optimal budget should be allotted, and accordingly the pickup trucks should be used on a 24 x 7 basis, as the night time can be as effectively used to clean up a city and this way, while they depreciate, their utilization can be maximized.
TYPES OF WASTE	While on the face of it every waste looks like it should be incinerated, this is not true. There are various categories of wastes. Broadly speaking, these can be categorized into four and should be treated separately as much as possible: 1.      Wastes that can be recycled and cannot be bio degraded. Such as plastic bottles, polyethylene packages and so on. 2.      Wastes that are compostable and can be bio degraded. 3.      Plant wastes such as fallen leaves, branches and so on. 4.      Common wastes such as papers, litter that can be incinerated. A comprehensive list of various waste types is as described in the below. Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_waste_types ˜ Agricultural waste ˜ Animal by-products ˜ Biodegradable waste ˜ Biomedical waste ˜ Bulky waste ˜ Business waste ˜ Chemical waste ˜ Clinical waste ˜ Coffee wastewater ˜ Commercial waste ˜ Composite waste ˜ Construction and demolition waste(C&D waste) ˜ Consumable waste ˜ Controlled waste ˜ Demolition waste ˜ Dog waste ˜ Domestic waste ˜ Electronic waste(e-waste) ˜ Food waste ˜ Gaseous wastes ˜ Green waste ˜ Grey water ˜ Hazardous waste ˜ Heat waste ˜ Household waste ˜ Household hazardous waste ˜ Human waste ˜ Sewage sludge ˜ Industrial waste ˜ Slag ˜ Fly ash ˜ Sludge ˜ Inert waste ˜ Inorganic waste ˜ Kitchen waste ˜ Litter ˜ Liquid waste ˜ Marine debris ˜ Medical waste ˜ Metabolic waste ˜ Mineral waste ˜ Mixed waste ˜ Municipal solid waste ˜ Nuclear waste (see Radioactive waste) ˜ Organic waste ˜ Packaging waste ˜ Post-consumer waste ˜ Radioactive waste ˜ Low level waste ˜ High level waste ˜ Mixed waste (radioactive/hazardous) ˜ Spent nuclear fuel ˜ Recyclable waste ˜ Residual waste ˜ Retail hazardous waste ˜ Sewage ˜ Sharps waste ˜ Ship disposal ˜ Slaughterhouse waste ˜ Special waste - see hazardous waste ˜ Toxic waste ˜ Uncontrolled waste ˜ Waste heat ˜ Wastewater ˜ Winery wastewater
HOW CAN DUST BE MINIMIZED	˜Dust is one of the major root causes of pollution in many of the cities.  Dust flies in the air and can be transported to long distances with the wind. Dust cleaning costs could be heavy and everyone has to put a lot of efforts in cleaning the dust inside the homes, and outside. This cost can be minimized if the soil erosion and dust generation is prevented to begin with. In many developed nations, dust is usually prevented by planting grass and trees and maintaining them across the year. Various other technical methods exist that can be employed and should be employed under stipulated budget that can mitigate soil erosion. Source Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erosion_control ˜  Buffer strip ˜  Cellular confinement systems ˜  Crop rotation ˜  Conservation tillage ˜  Contour bunding ˜  Contour plowing ˜  Cover crops ˜  Ditch liners ˜  Fiber rolls ˜  Gabions ˜  Hydroseeding ˜  Level spreaders ˜  Mulching ˜  Perennial crops ˜  Plasticulture ˜  Polyacrylamide (as a coagulant) ˜  Reforestation ˜  Riparian strip
FINE SYSTEM?	In many advanced nations, there is a heavy fine for littering on the road. Although a penalty system sometimes does not solve a problem and it would not be possible in India, this can be brought into picture into some cities and then be enforced if there are rewards. A pilot plan can started in a couple of cities and then this can be tracked if there are positive outcomes of fining people on littering.