The Prime Minister Narendra Modi today emphasised that cleanliness is not something to be achieved by budget allocations. It is rather, something that should become a mass movement.
Invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha against the colonial rule, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today mooted ‘Swachhagraha’ movement for a clean India which he said is not something that can be achieved by budget allocations alone. He was participating in a award distribution at New Delhi for Swachch Bharat good performers.
The Prime Minister said an angawadi worker, who could have exchanged her old sarees for utensils, used it to make handkerchiefs out of it for students to clean hands and nose.
“The habit of cleanliness had been inculcated in them… had these handkerchiefs been given to ministers, I don’t know what heights they would have scaled,” he said in a lighter vein.
The Prime Minister said re-use and recycling have been in the habits of Indians for a long time. He added that these need to be made more technology-driven.
He also urged start ups to develop tools for cleanliness which can be shaped as per the needs of the people.
Modi said while people take a lot of time to maintain and clean their vehicles, they do not treat public and government property as their own.
He said most of the people present at the venue of the conference must have made holes in bus seats using fingers while travelling. He said people should consider government and public property as their own.
He said he has suggested to Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu to start broadcasting “Swachhta news” on Doordarshan as it is necessary to spread the message.
Recalling an old incident, Modi said he had helped rebuild a village two decades ago after floods in Gujarat.
However, when he visited there five years later, he found that the villagers were using the toilets as shelter for goats.
Modi stressed that cleanliness habit should be inculcated from early age to end the menace of open defecation.
