Sanitary sense: a missing link?

India is undeniably a country of filth and dirt, but as always, my cribbing won't change it. So, this time, I've decided to curb my cynicism and speak in a rather calm and chilled out fashion, something that doesn't come naturally to me. As an average Indian, my listening skills fall way short of what is allowed as per an 'international' decorum of things. Anyway, as always, I don't think I'm making much sense, so lets just start afresh.

Okay; the other day, my school held some sort of function in which financial backing was provided to a few short-listed research topics selected by students of the school. By research topics, I don't mean a full-blown scientific research or behavioural research, that's too technical for high schoolers. What students were supposed to choose were 'social research' topics. Many of the students did come up with very innovative and potent subjects on which they chose to conduct their study. Some chose 'Women Empowerment', some 'Politics and Transparency', and others did 'Say No to Drugs', or something like that. The study branch that thrilled me the most, however, was 'Sanitation and Cleanliness' (again, my memory is not the most reliable thing in the world, so my apologies to my fellow students if I named their topics wrong). This was perhaps because I had more strong feelings on this particular topic than on the others.

The students came up with their demonstration and explained to the raptly attentive listener in me, all the activities that they held during their research. They had went to a rural neighbourhood to hold a seminar of sorts, handing out pamphlets about maintaining a basic civic and social sense of hygiene. They also detested the filthy habit of indifferent people who shamelessly, and maybe out of helplessness, excrete on the streets without restraints. This proved to be the premise of the topic I deal with in the coming paragraphs.

Campaigns of 'Safe Sex' or 'Prevention of HIV Aids', which have been, of late, a sort of taboo for people in our country, especially in the areas which we are focusing on in this discussion, have ignited in me a somewhat radical idea for which people have still not opened up completely. The idea which I propose is not a new innovation or discovery; its just that I feel, we in India are alienated to such a thought process. What I put forward is the free and unrestrained usage of adult diaper in the masses of our nation.

Now, for anyone who's been trained and groomed in the 'Indian' style of growing up, will most probably laugh this thing off, or get offended by it. I can't help the latter demarcation of people, because someone who seriously gets offended by the line won't read a word after this, implication being that their offence is, well, genuine. Anyhow, when you're done laughing or smirking or sighing at my childish thought, please have the kindness and regard to look at it in a rather practical light.

We have a very dire need of teaching our people basic civic sense, and I guess everybody would agree with me on that. People, not only villagers, but educated and urban people, on long drives and lazy sunday road trips, stop their SUVs midway to step out on highways and attend to nature's call in overlooking lush green fields. Now the best alternative to prevent such shameless acts of selfishness and indifference, can be of creating free, hygienic, toilets by the highways at intervals of, say, every 30 kilometers.

If even this is also an 'infrastructural drawback' for the government, the next best thing would be easily accessible and affordably cheap adult diapers.

Why not? If only we leave out the awkwardness and apprehension felt by people, and a sign of low self-control among your social circle of acquaintanceships, this is the perfect way out for such a dodgy and general civic problem. If we simply ignore the nasty social remarks and taunts poked at us, then maybe one day a clean, hygienic world can be imagined of. If each and every individual successfully and completely detaches themselves from the society, the society itself will prosper and be a better social milieu.

The advantages of defecating at the very moment of discomfort are innumerable. It, most importantly, increases the output and production value of humans manifolds. By and large, it eliminates bondages of frequent visits to wash rooms and prevents causing dissolution of focus and break concentration at the designated task. In a nutshell, if talking on a very productive and evaluative level, these garments would help humans deliver their best to their chosen fields of work.

To end this, I advocate people to open themselves to this filth crisis of sorts, and spread awareness about what all can be /should not be done regarding the matter.