N. Raghuraman's column: Miracles happen when you impress someone with identity without shaming them

Remember the toilet-cleaner advertisements of 2018, in which Bollywood star Akshay Kumar used to come on our TV screens and tell us how to keep his toilet clean? After going to a fan's house and convincing him to buy the product he is promoting, he promises, 'This is your next house.' Many of us must have quietly wished that Akshay would come to our house on this pretext. But they never came. Well, the joke is in its place, but the work of toilet cleaning advertisements in India has always been strange. They have to sell a functional product, show proof of it and also make sure that the whole family can see it. The company that makes the toilet cleaner Harpic, 'Reckitt', was successful in bringing the bathroom to the mainstream screen without alienating the audience. In 2018, Harpic made Akshay Kumar a brand ambassador under the cleanliness initiative. The company associated him with its 'Har Ghar Swachh' mission and the message of change in hygiene habits. In 2018, Serbian model Lazar Jankovic came to India for modeling and commercial contracts. He waited for six years for people's hygiene behavior to change, but it did not happen. In his journey to 20 states, he saw a problem that was difficult to ignore – garbage on the roads. In 2024, at the age of 31, Lazar started the '4CleanIndia' campaign. He carried garbage bags with him and did small cleanings wherever he went, from Rishikesh to Tamil Nadu and Sikkim. He soon realized that it was not enough to clean a place and post a video of it. He turned his efforts into a social media challenge and started encouraging people to clean up the neighbourhood. Now about 1.5 lakh people are connected to his page and are sharing pictures of his cleanliness drives. In Bengaluru, he has cleaned about 10 places, including areas around Jayanagar, JP Nagar, Church Street and Cubbon Park. Seeing Lazar cleaning the streets in Sector 55 of Gurugram, residents there formed WhatsApp groups to monitor the area. They say that 'they felt embarrassed to see a foreigner cleaning their streets'. Lazar's method is not unique. Pramila, a government employee in Rajasthan, helped villagers improve sanitation conditions by picking up a broom and increased access to toilets in her village from 25% to 100%. It was in Alwar, Rajasthan, that Rajendra Singh, along with villagers, revived traditional water conservation structures, helping to bring back river water and groundwater to drought-affected areas. Residents of Satara Tukum in Chandrapur district in Maharashtra keep their village clean without municipal sanitation workers. They take collective responsibility for their streets. The area is known for its exceptional cleanliness, community discipline, and forest conservation efforts. What I liked about Lazar is that he believes that cleanliness campaigns require less 'knowledge' and more emotion. He suggests that cleaning should be made a fun-activity rather than a lecture, perhaps something like a 'dance', so that people want to participate in it. With this vision, they are not just cleaning the streets, they are changing the identity with which people view public spaces. We understand Indian hygiene very well. Of course, we keep our homes clean. We just have to step out of the house a little with this mindset, so that our cities are also clean. We can start with a two-meter stretch of road outside our house, a nearby park or the wall next to our shop. If a Serbian model can pick up a garbage bag and make Indians think about responsibility towards their city and somewhere some ordinary Indians can make a difference in their neighbourhood, then we can do the same around us. The trap is that the space around us is not better when someone 'other' decides to change it. It is better when we decide that this place is ours.