I really want to see Bengaluru clean. I want to see India clean. But sometimes even convincing the people closest to us not to litter feels like a struggle.
I have tried asking family members and relatives not to throw waste on the road while travelling or leave it behind in public places. I haven’t always succeeded. Whether someone is educated or not seems to make surprisingly little difference in these conversations.
That bothers me. The road is still part of our city. The empty plot is still in somebody’s neighbourhood. The village, town, state and country we speak of with such belonging include these places too.
Why does our sense of responsibility stop at our doorstep?
Some people do not know how to separate household waste or where different kinds should go. Others know but do not want to make the effort. And some are willing, but lack dependable collection services. These are different problems, and we need to address each of them.
India’s Solid Waste Management Rules, which came into effect on 1 April 2026, require segregation at source into four streams: wet waste, dry waste, sanitary waste and special care waste. They also assign responsibilities to urban and rural local bodies. We have a framework. Making it work in everyday life is the challenge. [1]
Households need clear instructions and reliable collection. Waste that people carefully separate should remain separated during collection and transport. Civic bodies must provide functioning processing facilities and account for where the waste goes. Businesses also need to take responsibility for the waste their activities generate.
A village deserves a workable system just as much as a large city does. Moving a city’s rubbish beyond its boundaries cannot be the measure of success.
Then there is the attitude that somebody else will clean up after us.
Yes, waste collection is a public service. But the people doing that work deserve our cooperation and respect. Their employment is not permission for us to throw rubbish wherever we please.
I worry about what children learn from watching us. We can tell them to keep their surroundings clean, but what does that instruction mean when they see adults throwing waste out of a vehicle? Civic responsibility has to be practised at home as well as taught in school.
I also worry about what we are asking future generations to inherit. A clean street today means little if its waste has simply become another community’s problem.
There are people already doing this work responsibly. We should support them, learn from them and make it easier for others to participate.
We can learn how to handle the waste we generate, carry our litter until we can dispose of it properly, and ask our local bodies for reliable services. We can question both careless behaviour and failed systems.
If people change, society changes. That change must also reach the institutions responsible for serving us.
I haven’t even managed to change every habit within my own circle. Convincing the people closest to me not to litter is still difficult. But I don’t want that frustration to become an excuse to stop trying.