"OUR COUNTRY INDIA LOOKS DIRTY "
FOR
3rd prize
SIR PADAMPAT SINGHANIA EDUCATION CENTRE
SURAVI GANGULY
Respected chairperson, members of the jury, honorable teachers and friends. A very good morning to all of you. Shed your nationalism for a moment and consider yourself to be a foreign tourist in India . As the Maharaja of Air India welcomes you, you will step into a land of mystifying glory and splendor. But here the exotic dreams of the tourist come to a rude halt. The filth and squalor all around is a stark reminder of the fact that India is no longer a paradise simply put, our country India looks dirty and I shall be expressing my views for the motion.
Isn't this hard to believe? Let's take up a very simple example. When we go out for a stroll on the streets, what is the site that greets us? Firstly we spot the open drains as they give off such a nauseating pungent odor that we have to cover our nose and hurry along. Then there is the site of people easing themselves in full public view. On the Indian roads, we have to tread very carefully as there is always the danger of our stepping on to a mass of cow dung or human excreta. And to top it all, on every nook and corner there is always a huge pile of garbage. Friends if you think that this is obnoxious what would you say once I start speaking about the open manholes and stray animals?
Here my worthy opponents may say that the picture of dirt I have just painted is to be found only in those places which are not as developed as the metropolitan cities of India . But I take deep regret in informing the house that Mumbai, the city of glitz and glamour, has the ignominious distinction of being associated with khar and Dharavi which are the biggest slums in Asia .
I now call upon this august gathering to consider how our growing demand for technology has led to the increase of factories and smoke belching chimneys, which do a fantastic job of polluting our environment. Even the rivers have not been spared. For instance there is the mighty river Ganga which is considered to be a sacred entity. But now a days, solid wastes like plastics, garbage, trash etc are being dumped into this river. Now how can we possibly not believe this stark reality of our nation being actually dirty?
The condition of our country is such that we recoil to see it. So why can't we make a consolidated effort to make it clean? Thus I would like to appeal to all the socially conscious Indians to make a Herculean effort to pull one billion people out of this quagmire of dirt. So let us all join hands to re-enforce our national pledge so that we can once again proclaim that-“I love my country and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage”.
Thank you.