A lot of people say that poverty is a state of mind. It is a state of mind for those peons and sub-staff of government offices who are earning over 40k a month and still trying to show that they are poor. It is not a state of mind for those who struggle the whole day to earn enough food for himself/herself and his/her family.
When one of the rubbish surveys in our country suggested that if a person can spend Rs. 33 per day will not be considered poor, I thought of putting that committee in one of the slums with Rs. 33 every day to make them realise what poverty is.
Poverty brings a lot of problems with itself. Among those problems, sanitation is the one which walks hand in hand with poverty.
Poverty and Sanitation
When people are not able to get three basic necessities of life, they don’t care about anything else. Their prime focus remains on getting food, shelter and clothing. And this situation leads to illiteracy among those people. Where there is illiteracy, people don’t understand the importance of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation. They throw filth, spit where they live, they make roads and farms their toilets and they cook in the most unhygienic way. And these things lead to a lot of health issues.
Causes of Poverty and lack of Sanitation facilities
Corruption is the root cause of every problem in this country. Corruption is making rich people richer and poor people poorer. As far as sanitation is concerned, corruption has ruined the government’s effort to provide sanitation facilities to every citizen of this country.
Under the Swachh Bharat movement, government started appealing people to start putting trash in dust bins. Along with that, government also started giving grants and subsidies for making toilets. Government officials took maximum advantage of that scheme. They maligned unaware and illiterate poor people of different villages and filled their pockets. Rather than helping poor people in making the toilets, they snatched money from them and used them to create fake statistics.
Until there is corruption in this country, it is very difficult to eradicate poverty and sanitation problems from this country. I salute those NGOs who spread awareness about cleanliness and hygiene in slums and villages. I salute those teachers who teach the children of different slums and underdeveloped villages. Hopefully, it will bring change in the current scenario.
Very well written Paresh. It is just about the mind set.