Cleaner, Safer and Better Delhi

*This post won runner-up prize in Delhi Manifesto Contest on BlogAdda.

Delhi gives you many reasons to love it - ancient Mughal architecture, its fast-pace, flourishing suburbs and the heart-warming welcome of Delhi walas. You can't but admire the right mix of this city - Lal Qila aging gracefully in the background as modern day marvel Delhi Metro runs through the narrow lanes of Old Delhi. You take pride in the preserved heritage and growth of Nation's capital but a closer brush with this city leaves you heart-broken and shameful at the same time.

When BlogAdda asked bloggers to draft Delhi Manifesto and bring the issues we feel should be resolved to the forefront, I thought of the first day I came to this city. If you enter Delhi via road from Haryana, piles of garbage welcomes you. Your first reaction is - Is this our Nation's capital? Probably, no one imagines this kind of first impression from the most important city of your country. For me, Delhi needs to create a cleaner impression for anyone who visits it. Authorities should not only focus on cleaning and maintaining the posh localities but also the places which are the entry points of city. Cleaner Delhi should be one of the main agendas of Delhi Manifesto.

Another problem which should be addressed is - Public Toilets. People urinating in public is a usual sight in India but when you drive on wide four lanes of Delhi, you can spot many defecating along dry Yamuna banks or on Railway lines. We need to have much more public toilets in Delhi. This would solve two problems, of cleanliness and hygiene. Since Delhi has one of the biggest number of migrant population in the country, this would surely help in many ways.

My another concern is something which I didn't focus on for a very long time but after reading 'Holy Cow by Sarah Macdonald,' I understood the gravity of it. Stray cows and dogs in Delhi not only create traffic woes but if you read deeper into this problem, you will realize how the abandoned animals eat plastic from garbage while searching for food and die of slow and very painful death. When I came to know about this fact, I was shocked, not for the cleanliness part but how we treat the most sacred animal of India. For life long, we worship Cow and then when she is a burden, we leave her hungry and to die on open roads.

If we address three of the above mentioned problems in Delhi, we can avert one of the deadliest diseases 'Dengue' that hits the city every year.

Delhi has the most unbearable summers. Temperature in North India soars during summer but crowd and large number of industries make Delhi break all limits. We can't do much about it but what we can do is at least provide clean and safe drinking water to citizens, especially in summers. All those who can afford don't drink water supplied by Government but a large population which can't afford to have two square meals a day, suffer from many water borne diseases. Safe drinking water must be one of the top-most agendas of Delhi Government.

In recent times, Delhi has been lamented as the unsafest city for women. Safety of women is undoubtedly the biggest agenda. I know the Government is doing a lot to make women safe but my next concern is children. Nothing puts me off than watching rickshaws, autos and buses packed with more than double its capacity and taking children to school. What kind of safety is this? There should be strict laws regarding vehicles carrying school children, with special emphasis on vehicle's capacity and number of children it can carry.

If we look closely and put our own cities through the litmus test of these problems, we will find all cities face all these problems to some degree or another. We need all these changes not only in Delhi but everywhere in our country. And cleaning and making Nation's Capital better would serve as a perfect role model for rest of the nation to follow.

Let's voice our concerns and work towards a cleaner, safer and better Delhi.

This is My Delhi Manifesto in association with BlogAdda.com.

*Image Source - Google