Mumbai embraces its booming flamingo population

https://hakaimagazine.com/features/mumbai-embraces-its-booming-flamingo-population/

by Vigier • 4 years ago

91 49 4 years ago

The article does a good job of pointing out that environmental activism in India is entirely conducted by the upper-middle class. The majority of people living in Mumbai simply do not have the time to care one way or another about these things.

Last month I was in Mumbai visiting relatives, and found the ocean front is still covered in trash as it has been for decades. The vendors selling tea and snacks along the oceanfront are technically not allowed to sell there, so their primary concern is to make more money than they paid as a bribe to the beachfront police that day - the single-use cups and plates making it into a trash can is the least of anyone's concerns.

victor106• 4 years ago

I love India.

But I don’t understand why India is so dirty? I ask my offshore colleagues and some say it’s the population, some say it’s the culture and some blame it on politicians.

fooker• 4 years ago

It's apathy.

throwaway83242• 4 years ago

You are asking the wrong people. The offshore people (i.e. people living in India) will just justify what they see as "part of culture". They are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Talk to some expat Indians and you may get an answer.

As an expat, my reason is simple. Apathy!

rr808• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons just with more people and less space.

pkd• 4 years ago

Not everywhere is. In big cities there is some mixture of tragedy of the commons, corruption and resource allocation problem. Garbage/waste collection is a local responsibility, but the city/municipal administrations in India are not very powerful compared to their Western counterparts. They don't have as much freedom in generating or dispersing with revenue and are mostly dependent on the state and national governments for their expenses. This makes it hard for the local government to do anything apart from the bare minimum.

primitivesuave4• 4 years ago

Several studies have correlated education and income levels with environmental awareness. In practice, it is also due to corruption and the consequential failure of public services. The city I was born in (Dhanbad) suffers from rampant corruption, even by Indian standards - large swathes of the urban area have no other way to dispose of garbage other than paying private companies around $1-$2 per trash bag, which is then dumped in rivers and makeshift landfills.

Dhanbad allocated around $34 million dollars to its public waste management company a couple years ago, yet even today it still hasn't managed to get standardized trash bins and collection routes for most households. Endemic corruption and tax avoidance cripples virtually every public service in India, and any systems of regulation (law enforcement, bureaucracy, politicians, journalism, etc) are firmly captured by the business interests that perpetuate it.

dilawar2• 4 years ago

According to at least one anthropologist, the religious leaders were so obsessed with the idea of ritual purity and pollution that physical cleanliness took a beating. It is not easy to understand even for an Indian. Caste system foundations were also based on, or at least justified by, the idea of ritual purity and pollution. 'The remembered village' by MN Srinivas hints a bit about these things.

While growing up in village, there were so many sayings now I understand. Like my soul is pure what if my hands are dirty or I havnt took bath for two days. Cleaniness of place is even less cared for and personal cleanliness.

I get it that other dont understand why its so hard to keep your neighborhood clean. Its not hard, its just most dont care!. And before thr age of plastics, nature did all the cleaning during monsoon and summer.

PS: It is not the politician. It is the people and culture.

satvikpendem• 4 years ago

As an Indian, this meme makes me sad: https://i.redd.it/322obfbjpsaa1.png

India had one of the first civilizations with a functioning sanitary system, yet 4,000 years later, it is seemingly not yet on par with the Indus Valley civilization. Now, there are many factors for this of course, including population, corruption, apathy, etc, but still, the meme rings true.

kart23• 4 years ago

In my opinion, its a mixture of both. They don't have trash pickups in most places. So pretty much your only option to get rid of household trash is to burn it or dump it somewhere. And because there's no trashcans anywhere in public, people just toss trash wherever they like. Think about what your neighborhood would look like if there was no waste management services provided.

raincom2• 4 years ago

A typical Indian family cleans their home twice a day. The dirtiness has to do with public places. In villages, all trash end up being in creeks--eventually ending up in oceans. In mega cities, sewage systems don't work, and they are not maintained properly. Small business people, even trash pickers who charge to pick up trash, dump their trash elsewhere. This list is endless.

pkphilip3• 4 years ago

It is the culture and I say this as an Indian. There are poorer nations surrounding India which are much cleaner - example: Srilanka, Nepal, Bhutan etc.

I won't go into what exact part of culture results in this because it will upset a lot of people - but I do ask Indians reading my comment to ponder upon it without becoming defensive

rockyj• 4 years ago

The answer is simple - there is no functioning city level garbage collection/disposal system. Outside of a handful of cities, there is no system to regularly collect garbage and dispose it properly. This is due to the sheer size and population of the cities combined with government and citizen apathy, lack of manpower, lack of funds, lack of knowledge etc.

Lets see how it works generally in cities - millions of homes do their daily cleaning, there is no where to dump this garbage, so it is thrown street side or somewhere in a nearby small dump (https://scroll.in/article/802978/as-garbage-continues-to-pil...), then it is not collected for weeks, finally when it is collected it is thrown in a bigger dump (https://www.newsweek.com/trash-mountain-india-could-taller-t...). Only Indore that I know of (https://www.outlookindia.com/national/how-indore-became-the-...) is doing proper garbage collection and disposal.

p.s. my knowledge may not be fully up-to-date.

Nifty3929• 3 years ago

Because waste systems are very effortful. It would simply take lots and lots of labor to gather, transport, and dispose of all that trash in an organized way. Labor that is currently engaged in producing food, clothes, etc.

Think about the relative population density in many of these cities as well. And the relative productivity.

Not at all an easy problem to solve.

college_physics2• 4 years ago

Garbage disposal is a huge industry in many parts of the world, giving employment to many people. It is also a cutting edge domain where abilities to recycle cost efficiently are needed for sustainability.

So this is unfortunately a classic example where culture, by defining (and limiting) what people think is important, influences also their economic condition.

But its not easy to instigate a culture of respect for the commons and appreciation for its smooth functioning. And implementing at scale garbage disposal, just like any other utility infrastructure, whether it is the post office, water or electricity requires further society "software" that is not trivial

mikymoothrowa3• 4 years ago

You shouldn’t blame culture when investments on this front are lacking.

Local governments in India are perennially short on money and it’s they who are responsible for things like water supply, sanitation and garbage collection.

There are several joint venture garbage disposal companies operating in India. But only a few municipal corporations can afford to pay them.

And those few cities that do use these services rank well in cleanliness rankings

Mumbai embraces its booming flamingo population

Related Stories