Singara Chennai !

As I stepped on to the street to commence my morning activities I was so dazzled by the spectacle of a sparkling street that I had to shade my eyes with my hands.The road was spotlessly clean.Not a single shred of paper ,plastic cover or dried up leaf was in sight.It shone like a well polished mirror.Was I really in the centrally located ,busiest and one of the dirtiest areas of Chennai?

Yes I was .The overpowering noise a characteristic feature of these parts was very much audible.In fact it was in a much higher decibel.The usual noises were drowned by the voice of the State environment minister's booming through several loudspeakers erected in the makeshift podium in the vacant ground opposite to my flat.He was admonishing the local populace not to pollute the skies by burning tyres ,etc on 'Bhogi' which is to be celebrated two days hence.

Whilst he and the Mayor of the city were exhorting all to follow public hygiene ,their drivers and minions waiting impatiently on the pavement were without the least compunction spitting on and off on the street that had been so painstakingly spruced up .

Never the less it is my New year's wish that a minister or some important corporation official pay a visit to our locality [bursting to its seems with voters ready to cast their vote in every election without fail] once a fortnight in the least. It is then things look up .A lot of earth moving machines,garbage collecting trucks and sturdy men with shovels and pitch forks are pressed into service .Not a single stone is left unturned to welcome these new era monarchs !And in the process the area where I live gets a tremendous face lift.The environment around me becomes so spankingly clean that the breeze blowing acquires the tang of pure mountain air!

The ministers belonging to the two adversarial parties have one thing in common .They will willy nilly pay a visit to Singapore .Dazed by the high levels of public hygiene and cleanliness of that country will return , fired with the ambition of emulating the same back home .Riding high on the cleanliness drive several laws and bye laws will be passed .One such law passed in recent times Post haste was that no person should clean one's car on the roads .Very ambitious law indeed !It was obeyed barely for a week and was given the go bye,by the subjects swiftly who have scant regard for public hygiene and was conveniently over looked by the rulers who may have had more pressing [profitable] problems to attend to like local elections etc.I see every car or van parked on the streets get its regular wash right on the street itself before its owner drives off to work place!

One experiment with cleanliness that really worked was when onyx a conservancy company was awarded the contract to clean up Chennai .Undeterred by the Herculean task they transformed the city!A army of young and strong men worked hard for long hours under the constant supervision of their superiors.Overnight Chennai became 'Singara Chennai' and continued to remain so for several years .Chennaites were doubly blessed when the opposition party that stormed into power in the following hustings ,renewed the contract.

I was proud of my city then . I should have known better and kept my heart brimming with pride in check .Did all those visitors to Chennai cast a spiteful eye? In the subsequent convolutions of power the party that originally introduced the efficient company was back in the saddle.Their first act was to cancel the contract and award it to another citing cost factor!

Under the able mismanagement of this new company Chennai is back to its original self.The honey moon is over .Was it the cost factor that made this company employ much married,harried,middle aged women who look perpetually tired and fatigued and are pathetically deficient in the strength young men posses in clearing mountains of garbage and rubble.Some literally droop so frazzled over their shovels and brooms that I am moved to offer them a helping hand!