Can a garbage truck be clean?

Bangkok produces as much garbage as Mumbai but its waste-collection trucks are spotless even when they’re full of rubbish

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's garbage truck was barreling down Linking Road, and I was in the autorickshaw right behind it. Since it had just rained, the air was more or less pristine. In other words, no other aromas competed with the ripe and fetid vapours blowing towards me from the truck. The truck's maw was open and strands and chunks of its last junk meal were strung out between its metal teeth. A full load of wet garbage lurched dangerously within the vehicle. Every pothole dislodged some morsels.

Then came the sound - thwackkk!

Some wet organ oozing slime and blood was sprawled across the autorickshaw's front window, intertwined with straws and string, cloth and plastic, a messy entrail from the bowels of Mumbai. The main part of it was some animal's intestine. It had come from the garbage truck.

This sight, from my Mumbai visit this September, is neither unusual nor even extraordinary. Garbage trucks, both those owned by the BMC with their built-in compacters and open LCVs outsourced to third-party vendors are a perfectly common part of everyday Mumbai life.

We don't expect their filthy metal jaws to be closed. We expect to behold the city's excretions, ripe, rotten and brazen. We expect to grit our teeth, brace ourselves and look for the first opportunity to overtake them. At least this one is doing its job, we might think. Can't expect a garbage truck to shine, can you? It's picking up the city's slush, after all.

Since I've made a career out of challenging foregone conclusions, let me ask today's question: does a garbage truck inevitably have to be as filthy as the muck it carries?

In the 17 years I've lived in Bangkok, a city that produces as much garbage, debris and trash as Mumbai, the only waste-collection trucks I've seen are spotlessly clean even when they're chock-a-block with rubbish. The garbagemen hanging on to the back are usually protected by rubber boots and gloves, masks and helmets. The vehicle's jaws are always closed and they do not leave a malodorous trail of drippings and droppings when they hit the road.

Unlike in Mumbai, Bangkok's garbage isn't celebrated triumphantly on its way to the dumping grounds. And unlike Aamchi Mumbai, every day is as good as Vishwakarma Puja for this city's garbagemen. They clean their rear-loading compacter trucks daily till they acquire a military gleam. They take pride in collecting garbage efficiently and professionally, without littering or loitering.

What makes Mumbaikars so tolerant of filthy garbage trucks? Could it be that the average Mumbaikar is so abjectly grateful that rubbish is being collected at all that they look the other way when an overladen garbage truck passes?

The late adman Alyque Padamsee once answered this question with a pithy and memorable quip: "In Mumbai, what's mine is mine. What's everybody's is nobody's."

Mumbai's public spaces are effectively orphaned because no one feels any ownership of them. Since neither the BMC nor residents take pride in them, their desecration, slovenliness and neglect concern nobody. The resident who keeps her house clean by dumping refuse on the public pavement outside is exactly as culpable as the garbage collector who overloads his open truck and leaves a slushy trail of droppings on a newly built road he cares nothing for.

Ranking cities according to ‘dirtiness' is an exercise seldom undertaken because of its inherent complexity and lack of guidelines but in 2007 Mercer Human Resource Consulting released its Quality of Life Report, ranking 215 cities on metrics such as air pollution, waste management, water potability, hospital services, medical supplies and the presence of infectious diseases. For their baseline, they assumed New York, giving it an index score of 100. Baku, Azerbaijan, came in last with a score of 27.6 while Calgary, Canada, topped with a score of 131.7.

Mumbai? Seventh from the bottom, with a score of 38.2.

If you decide to challenge Mumbaikars about how much everyday shabbiness they are willing to tolerate, you could end up with a long list of questions. Here's another one waiting to be asked: does a city with so much construction inevitably have to be dusty?

Bangkok, with as many flyovers and high-rises coming up as Mumbai, always has a better answer. Turns out that all a builder has to do to create a zero-dust environment at the construction site is hire a lad and give him a water pipe. His only job will be to keep all open grounds damp, hose down debris and wash the tyres of departing trucks.

Of course, the two pre-requisites are a builder who believes his construction should not be adding dust to the city - and a determined citizenry convinced something can be done about the dust and debris
from construction.

Do such citizens exist? Of course they do. You can see them going in and out of Mumbai's metros, each and every one walking to the single dustbin at the exit to discard their used ticket.

The same Mumbaikar who goes out of his way to keep the metro spotless reaches street level - and becomes a don't-give-a-damn human being again.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.