)
The white exterior of prachin (ancient) Valmiki Temple, a stone's throw away from the city's iconic Connaught Place, has recently received a fresh coat of paint. The grass in the lawns is mowed and pavements are repaired. The temple's surroundings, including the adjacent Valmiki Sadan residential quarters, which is home to 300 families, seldom looked this clean, say local people.
On Tuesday afternoon, the temple had a posse of local police and paramilitary personnel guarding its heavily barricaded entrance. The security meant people being turned away, nearly 48 hours before the Valmiki Basti is scheduled to receive Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The PM is to launch the 'Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan' (Clean India Campaign) from Rajpath on October 2, birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. After that, he will visit this locality, where he is expected to inaugurate a toilet block, and wield a broom. He will also spend time at 'Bapu Niwas', the one-room quarter in the temple premises where Gandhi stayed for 214 days - between April 1946 and September 1947. A spinning wheel and a writing desk are preserved here as Gandhi memorabilia.
Valmikis are a Dalit community, and Modi's visit to the residential complex that houses sweepers employed with the New Delhi Municipal Council and the community temple is ripe with symbolism. As a tribute to the Father of the Nation, who laid much stress on cleanliness, the prime minister wants the objective of a 'clean India' achieved by 2019, the year of Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary. His ministers, his party (the Bharatiya Janata Party), and ideological mentor (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) are all contributing their might to make the event a success.
However, government servants, who have been asked to sacrifice their October 2 holiday, are not amused. Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth last week sent out a letter asking all employees to be present in their respective offices at 9 am on October 2 and take swachchh shapath (a pledge of cleanliness) at 9.45 am. After this, they are to clean their office premises. Another government order demanded 100 hours of staffers' time for voluntary cleaning of their houses or neighbourhood over the next year.
But the order did not answer a basic question bureaucrats were asking: "What do we do if the area is already clean; should we let it remain unclean a day before?" Safai karmcharis wondered: "Does the government want to get rid of us?"
A senior bureaucrat was unhappy that the Modi government had ruined the festive spirit by making her report to work on Ashtami and Navami. Orders have also been issued to keep offices around Rajpath closed after 2 pm on Wednesday, the eve of the event.
On Tuesday, officers were seen racing against time to meet deadlines before a long weekend. They said, on Thursday, there would also be tree plantation, besides the pledge and cleaning of offices.
The department of revenue in the finance ministry, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), along with their respective attached and subordinate offices, have chalked out detailed action plans to make the prime minister's 'Swachchh Bharat' programme a mass movement. The government will announce a detailed plan after the pledge on October 2. This will include creating awareness by organising essay competitions, cartoon-making events, debates and street theatre events. Government servants will be motivated to write essays on topics like 'my contribution to cleanliness of my office' and 'innovative steps to keep my office neat and clean'.
Ministers in the Modi Cabinet are already leading from the front. Information & Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar launched a 'massive but focused campaign roping celebrities and popular figures to spread the message of a 'Swachchh Bharat'.
Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani has been cleaning schools and roads, while Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti on Tuesday raked out some dirt from Lucknow's heavily polluted Gomti river. On Monday, Food & Civil Supplies Minister Ram Vilas Paswan was seen wielding a broom and sweeping the premises of his ministry.
The department of personnel and training, the nodal ministry for administrative issues, has sent detailed instructions to all departments to launch a special drive for cleaning canteens and government offices on October 2. It has said "it is imperative to follow" instructions laid out in paragraphs 9.7 and 9.8 of Chapter IX of DoPT's "Green Book, 3rd edition, 2008".
These instructions say, among other things, how utensils should be "individually" washed and rinsed "under running water" in "wash sink number one", then "passing them on to wash sink number two", sterilised in "wash sink number three which contains light solution of potassium permanganate" and wiped dry with "clean towel". It has asked for routine examination of canteen workers to ensure they take regular haircuts, their nails are clean and trimmed and they do not suffer from "skin disease" or "symptoms of ailments of the alimentary canal".
BJP and RSS are also chipping in with their bit for the cause. Workers of the two outfits across India have been asked to contribute to the campaign for at least two hours on October 2. "We want to turn this into a people's movement," a BJP office bearer said. The Sangh Parivar is using the social media to spread the message, while the New Delhi Municipal Council, which has started a 'Hohoshameshame' Facebook page, has appealed to people to send photographs of those found littering.
The scene at the Valmiki Temple, however, is beset with some confusion. The temple is run by a Valmiki Samaj trust. "We do not take any money from the government or NDMC," temple priest Swami Krishna Shah Vidyarthi says. The priest claims the cleaning and cooking at the temple is done by volunteers, who receive no wages. He complains that civic agency has in the past few days taken over the upkeep of the temple's surroundings and cleanliness of 'Bapu Niwas'.
There is also an interesting political subtext to the event at the Valmiki locality. People in this area are vocal supporters of Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, who is an MLA from here. Last week, Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu wrote to Kejriwal, requesting AAP to contribute to the campaign. He asked Kejriwal to "ensure that public properties are not defaced by writing on the walls or putting posters". He also asked Kejriwal to ensure "any publicity related to your party is done through authorised means at designated places only".
Kejriwal promised his party's support to the October 2 event, but also asked the minister to make cleanliness an ongoing exercise, and not merely a day-long event. The AAP leader said the government should do something to improve the lives of safai karamcharis. He alleged that some news items published recently showed "some ministers picked up brooms so that their photographs could appear in newspapers". Kejriwal also claimed that "in some cases, roads have been deliberately littered to create a photo opportunity for ministers to use brooms for cleaning those roads". Incidentally, broom is AAP's election symbol.
