Perceptions of Cleanliness

One of the first things most westerners notice when arriving in India is the trash, which is seemingly everywhere you look. This is often the case in developing countries, but appears especially prevalent in India. What is interesting though is that it doesn’t occur necessarily from a lack of places to put the trash, but rather more from a social acceptance of it being there in the first place.

The concept of what cultures consider “clean” is an interesting topic to begin with, as obviously different cultures have different levels of accepted cleanliness, and in the US living in one of the world’s newest and most modern cities, we have probably the tightest standards of cleanliness. It’s not that Indians are not clean, it’s just that the definition of clean for houses and communities is markedly different here. 

As our Profess here explained, there is a much greater social acceptance of trash and garbage in the streets here, and Indians, even wealthy Indians, do not seem to be concerned with it. Indian homes on the other hand, are impeccably clean, and even the poorest of Indians with dirt floors will do more cleaning and upkeep of their homes than the average American. But the cultural difference is at the property line, at which point the attitude very much changes. 

To me this is most striking for wealthy and upper classes homes and businesses, which here are often placed right alongside business and communities of much lesser means. While in the US these businesses often segregate themselves into very carefully manicured communities, they take on a much more individualized approach here. Here the high end hotels beautiful landscape and maintain their property right up until the property line, but after that the amount of trash littering the streets around them does not seem to matter. 

Culturally India is working to change this, and Prime Minister Modi is working on a street cleanliness campaign to improve the situation. I don’t know enough about Indian culture to know how this will succeed or not, but I do know changing cultural norms about things like this can be quite difficult. I hope it can succeed, because with western eyes we are often trained to take in our surroundings as a whole, and can be difficult to ignore the litter and debris when trying to take in the beauty of India, and there really is so much beauty to behold.