Page 63 - 31OCT2019E

theStack Cleanliness remains

key worry for india
Guru Gobind SinGh - MaSter of the White haWk A new book traces interesting relationships between
By JS Grewal; Oxford University Press; 296 pages; 1,100. urban planning and dirty cities across the country
To mark the tercentenary of Guru Gobind Singh’s birth, JS Grewal, Urban IndIa generates close to 3 million trucks of
who founded the Department of History at Amritsar’’s Guru Nanak untreated garbage every day. If these were laid end-
Dev University, of which he later became the Vice to-end, one could reach half way to the moon. The
Chancellor, co-authored a biographical story of the need for attention to sanitation and cleanliness is
10th Sikh Guru. Published in 1967, it was reprinted in both urgent and long-term.
1987. Three other biographies of Guru Gobind Singh The book Wasted — The Messy Story of Sanitation
were published in 1965-67. However, none of them in India, A Manifesto for Change by Ankur Bisen takes
gave references to the sources used for the text. The an honest look into India’s perpetual struggle with
present work gets over the deficiency with the use of these issues and suggests measures to overcome
contemporary and near contemporary sources in Gur- them. Historically, we have developed into a society
mukhi, Persian and English. The most striking legacy with a skewed mindset towards sanitation with our
of Guru Gobind Singh, the author writes, was the long caste system and non-accountability towards it.
struggle for political power that culminated in the Through stories, anecdotes and analysis of events,
establishment of the Khalsa Raj in the third quarter of the 18th cen- this book seeks solutions to the current entangled
tury. Both scholars and lay readers will gain much from this book. problems of urban planning, governance and legisla-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- tion, and institutional and human capacity building.
The book traces interesting
kali’’S dauGhter relationships between urban
By Raghav Chandra; Macmillan; 340 pages; 650 planning and dirty cities in
India; legislative and govern-
This is a book about convergence, about young people in love, ance lacunae and the rising
about the dilemma — or rather, the trauma — a young Dalit woman height of open landfills; the
member of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) faces in informality of waste man-
defending the country when push comes to shove, agement methods, and the
of changing mindsets and finally, will caste barriers degrading health of Indian
break and will love ultimately prevail? Skilfully weav- rivers, soil and air.
ing Deepika Thakur’s early years in Bhopal, her non- Arguing that all cur-
quota selection for the IFS, her days in the Academy rent solutions of India are
where she won the hearts of two of her batchmates extrapolated from these
and the journey to Geneva for the conference, Raghav flawed beliefs and structures
Chandra, brings to bear his insights into the work- and are therefore woefully
ing of the civil service as the issue heads for its final inadequate, Bisen draws a
denouement. You’’ll have to read to the very end to benchmark from clean countries of today.
find out how Thakur handles the situation — and which of the two “The effort to clean India will take a little more than
suitors wins her hand. It’’s quite an absorbing journey. to simply pick up the broom and start sweeping,” is
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- the grim message of the author who has thought and
researched about India’s sanitation problems and
dear PeoPle, With love and Care, Your doCtorS possible solutions while working in diverse fields such
By Debraj Shome & Aparna Govil Bhasker; Bloomsbury; 499 as affordable housing, food, retailing, urban and rural
consumption clusters, resource recovery and consum-
Can the trust that formed the unshakable foundation of the doctor- er products with an India focus.
patient relationship be restored? “Times have changed and from “Generations have lived their entire conscious
being thought of as divine, doctors are now routinely assaulted and lives in the company of dirt and thus their minds
hospitals vandalised. There are many discouraging stories of the are conditioned to accept dirty surroundings as the
strained doctor-patient relationship in the media on a daily basis,” status quo. Such a society cannot fight for a superior
the authors say in this book. The issues, they realised, reference point on sanitation where none exists in the
were complicated with no easy answers; the problems mind in the first place,” Bisen contends in the 571-page
are systematic with the solutions a few years ahead scholarly tome which, through stories, anecdotes and
of the times. “However, we realised that as doctors analysis of events examines the intertwined problems
and patients, we all do have stories to tell. Stories of of urban planning, governance and legislation, and
triumph, stories of love and sometimes even stories institutional and human capacity building. Such a so-
of failures,” the authors say. That is how these 34 ciety cannot be reasoned with to feel dogmatic about
heartwarming stories, the bulk of them by doctors, cleanliness about the basic needs of healthcare, food
came to be written. It’’s a testament to the human and employment, the author notes, adding: “It is wish-
spirit and should be essential reading in all medical ful thinking to wait for an awakening of Indian society
colleges. to fix the broken waste-management system.”

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