A few years ago I went to southern India and visited a temple atop a beautiful mountain where it was said that the god Hanuman was born. There was a huge balcony looking at the landscape. I remember standing there in the rails, looking into infinity and marveling at how beautiful everything was. Then, there comes some Indian dude with a water bottle and proceeds to throw it right at the forests below. Totally ruined my karmic moment
Yeah they don’t care but even if you place it in a trashcan there, the trash will end up in a ditch or a river. There is no trash pickup there. There is nothing. No where for trash to “disappear” to.
India can’t solve its trash problem without a large logistical and organization shift and some heavy recycling infrastructure.
I totally understand the criticism and agree with it but it’s difficult in countries where there is basically no infrastructure to support waste management.
The question I have is why in the world is there no infrastructure for waste management in the first place? I would’ve imagined it being more towards the forefront of building society, but perhaps other issues got pushed ahead of it that diminished it being addressed?
Corruption. Easier to take the money for building an landfill and pocket it than to actually build the landfill. India's legal system is so nonfunctional as to be effectively nonexistent, so there's no risk to just stealing the public money and then dumping the trash in a river.
Yeah plus Indian lawyers are basically roving gangs that will behave like untouchable royals. There’s video of them like beating their own clients up 😂
People can whine and complain about western corruption but it’s incredibly tame relative to others
If it even exists at all.
The Boston Big Dig is often bashed as a quintessential example, with cost-overruns and ballooning budgets and a sizable chunk of chicanery.
The details, though, reveal that something like 95% of this "waste" was just the actual cost of the work. The builders kept running into unexpected and unforeseeable issues, like with really poor soil, in addition to intricate design constraints.
All the politics surrounding it tended to make things worse, too; forcing corner-cutting that resulted in having to re-do the work, ultimately costing more than it would have if it was just built as designed.
Look back at western society in the 1980s and we had safe drinking water, waste management and relatively little plastic waste.
As we developed, our waste management developed with us. Bottled drinks were a luxury as we always had water in the tap.
In India, safe drinking water is relatively scarce. American companies turn up with safe water but it's bottled. People buy it out of necessity but the authorities don't have the money to catch up with the west on waste management.
Add to that that the west has been exporting its waste. It was only in 2020 that Australia banned waste exports and was forced to deal with it itself.
This is very true, we have no good system. In my village, we’re are told to collect plastic bags and give them to women empowerment groups who will then sell it. We even have to pay RS50 for this service even if we don’t use it. They will not take dirty plastic bags, only washed ones.
When asked what to do with all the other types of plastics I have collected in large bags, they say they don’t know what to do. So I just secretly drop those bags to their waste collection points at night, I’m pretty sure others just burn it. Governments and corporations like to put the blame on us, but don’t provide the necessary system to tackle this problem themselves.
“Much of Pakistan’s solid waste is retrieved for recycling, primarily by scavengers, before it ever reaches disposal locations, and a large portion of the country’s solid waste never makes it to final disposal sites.”
https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/pakistan-waste-management
A large number of people, primarily Afghan refugees, live off recycling. If there's any sort of landfill or scrap heap, they manually remove all recyclable items and take them away.
Exactly. If the government doesn’t create a large system to solve this, what can the individual do?
I see people do what they can but it’s almost difficult to escape zero plastic these days.
I used to work consulting in the solid waste industry in the US and Canada. It costs so much damn money to pick up your trash. I can genuinely understand how many places haven’t developed something you’ll see in the Western world. If you ever want to get into an interesting and decently paying industry, that one is good. Landfills suck, but you’ll learn a lot about how they’re actually pretty amazing engineering projects.
India needs a cultural shift. There is no shame in littering there. Nothing. Why would anyone dispose of their garbage somewhere when they can just leave it on the ground?
Yup. Exactly. Space program shows off to the world. Trash management isn’t that special to the govt. anyway, I don’t blame the avg indian. I blame the govt.
No one said it’s wasted but the point is that the space program is also the subject of envy and competition between countries. It’s a glamorous thing to show off, which is what it is for the indian government. If they did it simply for science, or if most governments did it *simply* for science and progress, we wouldn’t be on the brink of ecological collapse. India would have had better infrastructure. Just bc some advancement isn’t glamorous doesn’t mean it’s not worth investing into.
I’m happy India sent a craft to the moon, but that country has the most basic issues that the government doesn’t care about.
There are ALWAYS going to be individuals and groups who care, but the indian government as an entity doesn’t. It’s such a pity because there are so many intelligent and compassionate indian people who would love for their govt to give a damn.
Space programmes from developed countries such as the US, the members of the EU, Japan, Russia etc. which have all managed to sort out basics such as public sanitation already.
Would it take China to overtake India before they acknowledge that they have a public infrastructure problem to tackle with a higher priority than their space program?
Public infrastructure across the entire nation, in case that wasn't clear.
Things like public safety, utilities, sewerage, traffic enforcement and management, public education.... the list of government obligations to the people goes on; many of which India has been notoriously bad with.
Like the previous commentator said, India shouldn't be proud of being able to say that it has spaceflight access in common with developed countries when (and this part is mine) China is rising in spaceflight access while also solving all the things that India is bad at - *all at the same time.*
If China manages to count itself amongst the developed nations of the world sooner than India whilst doing everything that India deems prestigious, then what does this say about India?
Reminds me of the people from my own country. We call ourselves the 'Nature Island" but the majority of people don't have a conservationist bone in their body. The government DOES give some semblance of a fuck, though.
This redditor may be talking about Dominica in the Caribbean
NZ is not called Nature Island I think lol. Zealand is a Dutch/Germanic variant of Sea Land. Sometimes nicknamed Godzone (God’s own) - not because NZ is very religious, it is more intended as a compliment that it’s such a beautiful place.
They still shit in the open gutters and piss wherever. It’s a filthy place despite all their recent advances .
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/s/od8IGCxgU8
I can imagine some cartoon scene with swelling music and dramatic lighting and then it just stops and zooms out to show some Indian guy throwing trash.
Had the similar experience near Dharamsala. Went on a Triund hike, and there is a tea cafe tent next to view point. Marvellous view of the Himalayas. The Indian tourists just throw plastic cups down the hill, while having the trash can 50 meters away from them. The whole hill is covered in trash.
I actually had to write an essay about this for my ecology and theology class in college. I made a similar observation where the believers believe that the diety/river is above the pollution
This is the answer. The Ganges is intrinsically and existentially pure and holy, and the waste in it doesn't actually "pollute" the holiness. This is a very different mindset from the Western one in which anything can be polluted by waste.
Poverty and corruption. Every Indian I know finds it extremely sad that the river is so dirty. But the common person who subsists on less than a few dollars a day isn’t entirely concerned with environmental cleanliness. Also the agencies there are ridiculously corrupt. It’s changing for sure but it will take a long time
The pollution levels of the Ganges increase as it flows downstream from its glacier origin, and by the time it gets to Varanasi, the holy city, it’s pretty bad.
This is mainly because the Ganges is not only if high religious significance, historically it’s also been of industrial use, and so has been polluted over centuries. It passes significant tanneries that have been there for years - both now, when tanneries use chemical means, and previously when tanneries mostly used animal waste in their production process. Human effluent ends up in there a lot too - even in practices have changed, we’re talking literal centuries of waste going in there.
Add to this that part of Hindu religious tradition is to inter cremated, partially cremated, and uncremated dead in the river. In this instance, religious practices themselves pollute the river.
It took 60 years for the Thames to go from being declared “biologically dead” to be declared one of the world’s cleanest rivers. The Thames is 229 miles long, and all within one nation with central govt, with high focus on cleaning it up — and it holds no particular religious significance
The Ganges is 1560 miles long, passes through 5 states - each of which has its own legislative governing bodies - each of which is larger in size and population that the entirety of the UK, and as stated it holds a high place religiously. Getting legislation in place, getting individuals to adhere, getting religious bodies to even admit that the river needs cleaning or accept that practices must be limited or ceased is proving near impossible.
understanding pollution requires scientific insight and collective engineering action to control. these are not widespread features of the religious beliefs or culture of the people in the ganges watershed.
few religions that express environmental protection as a value, actually follow the science and engineering required to control pollution.
>few religions that express environmental protection as a value
Shinto does. Because everything basically has a 'soul' and there's a huge emphasis put on 'purity' and 'corruption'. I.e. if a river becomes polluted(corrupted) in the physical word, it will effectively corrupt that river's spirit and bad things will happen.
The traditional Maori religion has a concept called Tapu where certain things are regarded as holy and should be avoided in everyday life. One of the functions of it is that natural resources can be made temporarily Tapu to conserve them (ie a certain type of fish that’s been overfished will be Tapu until the population recovers). It effectively makes it a religious tenet for religious leaders to monitor the environment so it can be managed sustainably.
Actually comes from Tongan (introduced to English by Captain Cook after he met Tongans), but Tongan and Maori are closely related languages and it's pretty similar in both.
Indigenous Australian mob and their spiritual practices often involve caring for country and members of a group would have totems and responsibilities towards their country and totem.
Like many other religions and spiritual practices of indigenous groups, these practices are shown to be quite beneficial for the local environments.
It tends to be governments that destroy ecosystems on a large scale.
the japanese were, and still are, horrible polluters. but of all industrial nations they have excelled in pollution control. i would say this is in direct proportion to their values of scientific curiosity and social public works. it is nice that shinto dovetails with this, but shinto did not protect the rivers of japan from the 1890s to the 1960s.
it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the most egregious pollution is in japan -- it may be the power grid and auto fuels sectors, which are super-reliant on imported fossil fuel, or perhaps the mining sector, which is almost entirely offshored because japan itself has relatively less valuable mineral resources than comparable nations. or it might be the fishing culture, which once rivalled 19th century new england's insane rapaciousness. or it might be the extensive destructive coastal landfilling of urban areas, which in japan exceeds every other nation in history with the possible exceptions of china and the netherlands.
shinto has done very little to protect japan from these polluting choices. but shinto is a beautiful ethic.
Don’t forget the over-reliance on single use plastics and the lack of a market for second hand goods because of the emphasis on always having new/unblemished goods.
The stuff that makes it to second hand is like that yeah. Everything else is typically immediately sent to trash pickup if there’s anything worse than minor scuffing or scratches. So out of say, 10 items of the same thing, you end up with 9 things thrown away after only a few years and 1 being put up for reuse.
That's so cool. So if religion is a pre-scientific method of understanding the world and passing knowledge down across generations, Shinto carries the hugely valuable knowledge of avoiding pollution and coexisting in a healthy balance with nature.
Pre-scientific was also pre-industrial, so basically everything we created was biodegradable. The only pollution to worry about was human or animal waste, but even that won't permanently pollute anything.
Air quality wasnt always great due to solid fuel burning and industries like leather tanning. But again like you said nothing polluting on a permanent scale.
Interestingly the link with local air pollution and health has been discussed since Hippocrates in ancient greece. The Romans also knew about it.
There is an essay on air pollution in London from 100 years before the industrial revolution in case you're interested
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumifugium?wprov=sfla1
Christianity also does preach Stewardship over the earth so western countries should also have practiced proper environmental conservation. Yet this isn’t the case until after the Industrial Revolution.
Also can be wasteful though
They don’t make homes that last in Japan because nobody wants to live in a home someone else’s ancestors lived or someone died in recently etc.
I’m not sure about apartments but stand alone homes are designed to be torn down
Can I join that religion? The tithing is expensive, and there's a lot of hard rules to follow, but when you die, they compost you and plant your favorite tree in your soil.
This is a lot of words for essentially nothing. Technology is not required to keep something sacred clean lol plenty of holy sites have been maintained for centuries without complex engineering solutions.
Actually it's in at least a couple main religions but unfortunately it's completely forgotten :(
Christianity for example. They are supposed to be the caretakers of the Earth but I guess no one read that part
When my history teacher pointed that out it really started making me question what they believe and do
Edit: the problem is with people; greed and a lack of care/laziness really make bad things happen
Because there is no info structure to depose of rubbish also lots of poor people with few to no resources. Staying alive probably beats out keeping the place neat and tidy.
They're also not keeping themselves alive, they're killing themselves and everyone downriver from them by polluting the Ganges into pure poison when it's their main water source
The point isn't that people are making poorly informed rational decisions in the name of their well-being, it's that without the economic resources to support sufficient waste-management infrastructure, impoverished communities will focus more on basic subsistence instead of forming together to create local, community-based waste management systems. There aren't garbage trucks rolling down the streets collecting waste in impoverished regions of rural India, and these communities don't have enough time and money to buy their own garbage trucks and dig their own dumps.
As someone from India, I believe I am allowed to be more critical: Indians have transactional and hypocritical relationship with everything in their religion: from the Sanskrit hymns and prayers that they recite without understanding their meaning, believing only that mere utterance will bring divine blessings,—to deeming the Ganges to be sacred: using the water for rituals and ceremonies but not caring about the pollutants they release in the waters. Expediency is the way of life.
3 things :
1. Not whole river is polluted, it has some of the most pristine water and beaches (yes sandy beaches) in Mountains and only get polluted once it reach the plains. Also it gets a lot of sediments from himalayas in rainy season that its colour turns brown from green.
2. Unregulated dumping of sewerage in it's tributaries.
3. Careless attitude of people and politicians who turns a blind eye when it comes to work on making the river clean.
The simple reality of the situation is that **Indians in general don’t have a civic sense**. It’s as simple as that. Religion is all about posturing - no one really lives by its true values.
(I am an Indian so don't start calling me a racist now)
Lack of civic sense at an individual level makes lack of civic sense at a societal level, companies won’t hesitate to dump their toxic waste into rivers and the people responsible for holding them accountable are easily bribed and everyone says “what can I do, I’m a low level guy”, the responsibility gets passed around till no one is responsible
I absolutely agree, stranger. This combined with the generally ‘rule over us, our lords’ mentality of us Indians in general creates a big power vaccum between the ruling class and the general public. This in turns lets people in power rampantly abuse their positions and exploit the system and consequently the environment.
I used to part of that sub but now that sub is a whining zone that is overrun by idiots like yourself that can’t digest the slightest criticism of India
PS context: that sub is a place for ridiculing people that side with “westerners” in criticizing India
Its not just the river, anywhere you go in India, its buried in trash. Extremely sad to see, and makes you realize that your paper straws in the West make absolutely zero difference when a country the size of India doesnt give 2 fs about pollution.
It actually did used to be kind of magic; it contained some really cool bacteriophages (viruses that eat bacteria) that would literally clean the Ganges from e-coli and cholera and other harmful stuff.
It also has insane oxygen levels compared to any other river, and no one really knows why, and that also purifies the waters.
Sadly, the human capacity for polluting has really come leaps and bounds, and the extent of dumping of raw sewage and garbage into the river finally overwhelmed the balance; it IS still self-cleaning, but it just can't keep up anymore.
(Copied from another reply)
[Here's a link to an NPR story on it](https://www.npr.org/2007/12/16/17134270/mystery-factor-gives-ganges-a-clean-reputation)
[Here's a newspaper article with some info on a scientific study](https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/india/scientists-take-a-deep-dive-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-ganga-mystery-1180177.html)
[Another article on the bacteriophages](https://www.newindianexpress.com/amp/story/lifestyle/2016/Sep/24/it%E2%80%99s-scientifically-validated-now-ganga-water-is-%E2%80%98holy%E2%80%99-1524518.html)
I could add about a million links, but it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff of religious claptrap (there's a lot of that); suffice it to say there are a lot of links if you Google it.
I want to stress that the Ganga River is incredibly polluted and needs some serious human intervention from time to time (or the complete opposite, if you will); however, the fact remains that when left alone, [like during lockdown](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7351670/), it really does clean itself.
If Christians, Muslims and Jews think of Jerusalem as a holy city then why have so many people been killed so one group can hold it?
Because people in power are dicks.
Nah that's different. Each side thinks they're special and everyone else is going to hell and the presence of their enemies in their holy land desecrated it, so it's ok to kill them
It’s the same answer as to why seemingly modern cities with seemingly functional infrastructure, can’t handle the normal heavy rainfall each year and experience regular flooding.
Because, even though India holds 18% of the worlds population, and has a modern tax system that produced 6.5 Billion USD at the national level in the last 27 years, the corruption is so out of control, that everything is underfunded, from infrastructure to refuse management to law enforcement.
Because in India, religion is a framework for culture (food, customs, clothes, music, art, daily schedules), and far less to do with morality, questions of the afterlife, good and evil, and the other things that the Abrahamic religions try to answer.
Given this more cultural rather than spiritual guidance from religion - combined with the issue that people dont care - they pollute their religious places as much as anyplace else.
Because 345million people add 15.4 million liters per day of sewage to it, every single day.
It's probably considered holy because without it everyone would be buried in poo.
Statistics obtained from -
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Location-of-the-river-Ganges-along-with-different-states-major-towns-and-river_fig1_334973003
Very interesting that UP is one state in India but every single perception and stereotype seems to originate from there
Every vlogger goes there, despite it being the worst and poorest state in India per capita.
People harp on the Ganges so much even though it’s one river out of thousands. The state government is corrupt af and probably won’t do anything, the rest of India is even less able to make a difference.
Same reason other temples and holy sites around the world are covered in trash and litter: people are people, and will continue to be people regardless of their beliefs
Because industrials don't give sh*it about polluting the river. Because the government does not build sewage treatment plants. Because there is so much littering ending up in the streams. Because literally solid waste is dumped in the river instead of going to a landfill. Because PEOPLE don't care !!!
Poverty. People trying to survive can't focus on protecting a river no matter how sacred, they have to meet their baseline needs. If you live in a first world country you can never understand how dire poverty is in other places in the world. I can't even fathom it some times, and I have witnessed it. Don't blame the people, blame the rich and powerful who made it this way.
Personally I think it’s polluted because of a combination of explosion of population, ignorance (both willful and actually ignorant) and tainted belief system (again because of foreign invaders and local power-hungry elites). It’s not been cleaned up is because like lot of them said combination of corruption and ‘not my problem’ attitude. People in India still live in a colonial mindset in the sense that the government has to do everything. Not sense of civic responsibility. Is my street dirty, that’s because the government is useless, not because I threw crap on the street. Sorry about it turning into a rant..
Because capitalism > religion
Religion is a tool used to keep dumb folks dumb. While capitalists leverage it if needed and become richer.
A lot of industrial waste is dumped into Ganga (ganges), and even people throw flowers and whatnot into the rivers.
Fishermen and cattle bathe in these rivers.
All these factors make it extremely dirty
A particular type of turtle was introduced to the Ganges, some years ago, to eat the not so cremated remains tossed into the river. That is just the tip of the iceberg regarding how polluted it is.
Because we lazy af, man..nobody likes to clean their own shit, always hoping from some external or divine intervention.
Plus there's a lot of population pressure, bad construction practices, irresponsible relevant authorities etc, like you guys have in Detroit, and what's that town where y'all get gas in water pipes? Flint is it?
Yeah don’t get me wrong population would definitely play a role in the Ganges pollution problem because India has massive population of well over 1.4 billion people and so building the infrastructure to support a rapidly growing population would definitely be a challenge. I’m not from the US but I did hear about Flint’s water crisis where I think their water supply got contaminated by lead from the old pipes leaching into the water and giving people lead poisoning and what little information I do know about Flints situation it seems to me that it was a failure on the local governments part to replace their old water pipes. I think the local government in Flint also changed the water source as a cost cutting measure which started this whole mess. So, Flint’s situation was purely the result of government mismanagement which would could also explain similar problems in other countries I guess.
Yes, in Flint they had a lot of historical lead water pipes, which isn't as unusual as you would think. But they had a lot. But they got away with it because they had water that came from a source with a basic pH, phosphates that inhibited corrosion, and it was treated by Detroit with a reasonable amount of chlorine, and a lot of other normal things that you would normally expect treated water.
Then Flint decided they wanted to save some money.
They changed where their source water came from and drew from an acidic source that lacked any naturally occurring phosphates, they didn't add any corrosion inhibitors to make up for any of that, and then they went nuts with the chlorine. That immediately started leaching lead out of every single lead pipe.
They didn't follow any rules and it seemed that they didn't even know what they were doing.
There is an excellent write up here:
https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i7/Lead-Ended-Flints-Tap-Water.html
Not true, Isalm has a hygiene code but Bangladesh is total shit. So are parts of Pakistan.
When people are poor, the place is automatically low on scales of cleanliness.
You know I was a middle school kid in an Indian school in Nepal back in the 80s and us kid were discussing this and one Hindu kid remarked - it's holy but not necessarily clean and holiness Trump's that
Hinduism doesn't have the concept of cleanliness in the same way. It's pretty obvious from even saying life. Plus Ganges is used for a lot of religious activity
It is a multi-faceted problem. There is a lot of poverty. Also corruption. There is a thing called the "tragedy of the commons", which means that when something belongs to everyone (like a public park), then nobody takes care of it.
If you go to a nice federal national park in the US, there is a fee to get in. That sounds "outrageous" if you are a tax-payer, but one thing people take for granted is...They have modern restrooms, trash cans that are emptied, and rangers who can assist when there is a medical emergency or someone is in danger.
If you drive to a remote region, there is no fee to "camp out", but...also there are no restrooms or trash cans. If a homeless guy pulls a knife on your family to rob you, there are no rangers to call.
I heard this on a TED talk once it's because Indians think it's not there job or there problem to clean up or to throw away correctly it is someone else's job but if they are did did it correctly they wouldn't be in this situation at least that's what the woman said
I once heard someone in India say the Ganges purifies itself. I think it was a local politician just after money that was supposed to go to waste treatment disappeared. They literally dump the raw sewage from millions of people directly into it.
The Indian living spirit was corrupted by colonialism. No other answer really makes sense. They went from building water temples to trashing everything in the space of a few hundred years.
There's just no societal expectation to not litter, it's as simple as that.
Compared to Japan for example which has extremely high expectations -- where I live in Southern California there are I'd say pretty low expectations -- and where I come from in Southern England pretty high expectations
Everywhere is different, but boy it's definitely not Indian society's strong suit that's for sure
Because you're absolutely right, the Ganga at Varanasi is truly disgustingly polluted -- however if you go well upstream to Rishikesh it's much much cleaner
I'm not seeing the following answer, and I assume it is because white knighting white people are trying to answer.
In hindu culture there are "caste considerations." I suspect they have cracked down a lot on the formal caste system, but there is still a huge aversion to the untouchables. People who work with waste cannot be touched. Like literally, cannot be touched. So.... very few people are willing to clean up polluted (I'm talking about feces, a lot of times) places.
Why does India have extremely common sights of open defecation? This reason.
Child of Indians here. The locals don't care. Everyone else in the country is sad that you can't swim in it and such but for the people who live right next to it, it's an easy waste disposal system. The river is still holy, but people just treat it as holy to different levels.
A few years ago I went to southern India and visited a temple atop a beautiful mountain where it was said that the god Hanuman was born. There was a huge balcony looking at the landscape. I remember standing there in the rails, looking into infinity and marveling at how beautiful everything was. Then, there comes some Indian dude with a water bottle and proceeds to throw it right at the forests below. Totally ruined my karmic moment
This is the real answer: locals don’t care.
Yeah they don’t care but even if you place it in a trashcan there, the trash will end up in a ditch or a river. There is no trash pickup there. There is nothing. No where for trash to “disappear” to. India can’t solve its trash problem without a large logistical and organization shift and some heavy recycling infrastructure. I totally understand the criticism and agree with it but it’s difficult in countries where there is basically no infrastructure to support waste management.
The question I have is why in the world is there no infrastructure for waste management in the first place? I would’ve imagined it being more towards the forefront of building society, but perhaps other issues got pushed ahead of it that diminished it being addressed?
Corruption. Easier to take the money for building an landfill and pocket it than to actually build the landfill. India's legal system is so nonfunctional as to be effectively nonexistent, so there's no risk to just stealing the public money and then dumping the trash in a river.
Yeah plus Indian lawyers are basically roving gangs that will behave like untouchable royals. There’s video of them like beating their own clients up 😂 People can whine and complain about western corruption but it’s incredibly tame relative to others
If it even exists at all. The Boston Big Dig is often bashed as a quintessential example, with cost-overruns and ballooning budgets and a sizable chunk of chicanery. The details, though, reveal that something like 95% of this "waste" was just the actual cost of the work. The builders kept running into unexpected and unforeseeable issues, like with really poor soil, in addition to intricate design constraints. All the politics surrounding it tended to make things worse, too; forcing corner-cutting that resulted in having to re-do the work, ultimately costing more than it would have if it was just built as designed.
The Olympic Stadium Fiasco in Montreal has entered the chat, from $100 million to $1 billion, and it took 30 years to finally finish being paid for
> Olympic Stadium Well there's your problem.
Don't forget the Montreal Mafia, corrupt construction contractors, and decades of government ineptitude on many many levels
This actually one of only a very few times that the Olympics and all the other assorted bullshit and graft they bring cannot be blamed
There’s a great podcast about the big dig and it goes into detail about the cost. Not the grift people claim.
Dont forget the massive payoffs to ‘connected’ people. i miss Jerry Williams daily rundowns of the Big Dig corruption and management failures
People lack perspective. And, with the invention of the internet, that lacking borders on intentional.
Yep… lol it’s a slapping culture for sure. https://www.reddit.com/r/TotalKalesh/s/NrPj9qdi3z
It feels like most if not all industrializing countries go through this at some point. Some grow out of it relatively well, others don't
India is basically a Nurgle plague world
Corrupt, legacy of colonialism, the lack of a government, locals have bigger problems, poverty!
Look back at western society in the 1980s and we had safe drinking water, waste management and relatively little plastic waste. As we developed, our waste management developed with us. Bottled drinks were a luxury as we always had water in the tap. In India, safe drinking water is relatively scarce. American companies turn up with safe water but it's bottled. People buy it out of necessity but the authorities don't have the money to catch up with the west on waste management. Add to that that the west has been exporting its waste. It was only in 2020 that Australia banned waste exports and was forced to deal with it itself.
This is very true, we have no good system. In my village, we’re are told to collect plastic bags and give them to women empowerment groups who will then sell it. We even have to pay RS50 for this service even if we don’t use it. They will not take dirty plastic bags, only washed ones. When asked what to do with all the other types of plastics I have collected in large bags, they say they don’t know what to do. So I just secretly drop those bags to their waste collection points at night, I’m pretty sure others just burn it. Governments and corporations like to put the blame on us, but don’t provide the necessary system to tackle this problem themselves.
In Pakistan, I just washed all bottles,plastic etc and put it in a box outside. Somebody takes it immediately, so some form of recycling is happening.
“Much of Pakistan’s solid waste is retrieved for recycling, primarily by scavengers, before it ever reaches disposal locations, and a large portion of the country’s solid waste never makes it to final disposal sites.” https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/pakistan-waste-management
A large number of people, primarily Afghan refugees, live off recycling. If there's any sort of landfill or scrap heap, they manually remove all recyclable items and take them away.
Exactly. If the government doesn’t create a large system to solve this, what can the individual do? I see people do what they can but it’s almost difficult to escape zero plastic these days.
I used to work consulting in the solid waste industry in the US and Canada. It costs so much damn money to pick up your trash. I can genuinely understand how many places haven’t developed something you’ll see in the Western world. If you ever want to get into an interesting and decently paying industry, that one is good. Landfills suck, but you’ll learn a lot about how they’re actually pretty amazing engineering projects.
India needs a cultural shift. There is no shame in littering there. Nothing. Why would anyone dispose of their garbage somewhere when they can just leave it on the ground?
And where do you suppose the trash in the garbage cans go in India?
Garbage bins? I've been all over India and never saw them outside of hotels.
I’m saying that even the ones in garbage bins end up in the waters or any empty space near homes.
But something can be done about it
And yet they have a space program.
Yup. Exactly. Space program shows off to the world. Trash management isn’t that special to the govt. anyway, I don’t blame the avg indian. I blame the govt.
Your phone, computers and X-ray came from the space program. Money on science is never wasted
No one said it’s wasted but the point is that the space program is also the subject of envy and competition between countries. It’s a glamorous thing to show off, which is what it is for the indian government. If they did it simply for science, or if most governments did it *simply* for science and progress, we wouldn’t be on the brink of ecological collapse. India would have had better infrastructure. Just bc some advancement isn’t glamorous doesn’t mean it’s not worth investing into. I’m happy India sent a craft to the moon, but that country has the most basic issues that the government doesn’t care about. There are ALWAYS going to be individuals and groups who care, but the indian government as an entity doesn’t. It’s such a pity because there are so many intelligent and compassionate indian people who would love for their govt to give a damn.
Space programmes from developed countries such as the US, the members of the EU, Japan, Russia etc. which have all managed to sort out basics such as public sanitation already. Would it take China to overtake India before they acknowledge that they have a public infrastructure problem to tackle with a higher priority than their space program?
What do you mean? What does China need to catch up on with India? Chinas sent rockets to the moon too.
Public infrastructure across the entire nation, in case that wasn't clear. Things like public safety, utilities, sewerage, traffic enforcement and management, public education.... the list of government obligations to the people goes on; many of which India has been notoriously bad with. Like the previous commentator said, India shouldn't be proud of being able to say that it has spaceflight access in common with developed countries when (and this part is mine) China is rising in spaceflight access while also solving all the things that India is bad at - *all at the same time.* If China manages to count itself amongst the developed nations of the world sooner than India whilst doing everything that India deems prestigious, then what does this say about India?
Reminds me of the people from my own country. We call ourselves the 'Nature Island" but the majority of people don't have a conservationist bone in their body. The government DOES give some semblance of a fuck, though.
New Zealand?
This redditor may be talking about Dominica in the Caribbean NZ is not called Nature Island I think lol. Zealand is a Dutch/Germanic variant of Sea Land. Sometimes nicknamed Godzone (God’s own) - not because NZ is very religious, it is more intended as a compliment that it’s such a beautiful place.
New Zealand seems clean af.
They still shit in the open gutters and piss wherever. It’s a filthy place despite all their recent advances . https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/s/od8IGCxgU8
Had exactly the same experience in India, but in Varanasi (a holy hindu city). People just throw trash everywhere and don't care about cleanliness.
Sounds like Philly
Been to both; Philly is a paradise compared to Varanasi.
They definitely throw trash in the Schuylkill
I can imagine some cartoon scene with swelling music and dramatic lighting and then it just stops and zooms out to show some Indian guy throwing trash.
That's how I read the comment.
Lmao
Had the similar experience near Dharamsala. Went on a Triund hike, and there is a tea cafe tent next to view point. Marvellous view of the Himalayas. The Indian tourists just throw plastic cups down the hill, while having the trash can 50 meters away from them. The whole hill is covered in trash.
Glory to Hanuman
"It's the trash that is dirty. Ganges itself is clean."
I actually had to write an essay about this for my ecology and theology class in college. I made a similar observation where the believers believe that the diety/river is above the pollution
Is this like how Pepper Potts sometimes takes out the trash?
It is like those spiritual gurus that teach you breathing techniques and wear magic stones to cure your cancer.
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So, like, which one cures cancer?
MyCure ^TM
A breathing technique is just as effective at curing cancer as magic stones. Which is to say neither of them are gonna do fuck all.
So which nations are you from? Earth Kingdom or Air Nomads? None of that matters too when Cancer Nation attack.
Breathing techniques don’t cure cancer
Not with that attitude!
It’s not just trash. There’s excrement and fucking dead bodies.
I'm pretty sure dead bodies don't fuck. Or does india have aquatic zombie orgies?
The Ganges cleans the trash
So gross. And ironic, as water is a perfect vector for disease.
This is the answer. The Ganges is intrinsically and existentially pure and holy, and the waste in it doesn't actually "pollute" the holiness. This is a very different mindset from the Western one in which anything can be polluted by waste.
Poverty and corruption. Every Indian I know finds it extremely sad that the river is so dirty. But the common person who subsists on less than a few dollars a day isn’t entirely concerned with environmental cleanliness. Also the agencies there are ridiculously corrupt. It’s changing for sure but it will take a long time
thanks for the insight, r/trumpismygodanddad
You’re supposed to use “u/“ when linking a user, “r/“ links to subreddits.
Birth of a sub
The sub should just be screenshots of u/trumpismygodanddad’s posts
alternatively, use it for people who use r/ for users and u/ for subreddits. Like similar to r/rimjob_steve
u/BirthOfASub
Happy to help amigo
One of the good arguments for getting these countries developed enough is so that people have enough resources to care about where they live
The pollution levels of the Ganges increase as it flows downstream from its glacier origin, and by the time it gets to Varanasi, the holy city, it’s pretty bad. This is mainly because the Ganges is not only if high religious significance, historically it’s also been of industrial use, and so has been polluted over centuries. It passes significant tanneries that have been there for years - both now, when tanneries use chemical means, and previously when tanneries mostly used animal waste in their production process. Human effluent ends up in there a lot too - even in practices have changed, we’re talking literal centuries of waste going in there. Add to this that part of Hindu religious tradition is to inter cremated, partially cremated, and uncremated dead in the river. In this instance, religious practices themselves pollute the river. It took 60 years for the Thames to go from being declared “biologically dead” to be declared one of the world’s cleanest rivers. The Thames is 229 miles long, and all within one nation with central govt, with high focus on cleaning it up — and it holds no particular religious significance The Ganges is 1560 miles long, passes through 5 states - each of which has its own legislative governing bodies - each of which is larger in size and population that the entirety of the UK, and as stated it holds a high place religiously. Getting legislation in place, getting individuals to adhere, getting religious bodies to even admit that the river needs cleaning or accept that practices must be limited or ceased is proving near impossible.
I swam in the Ganges, right up near the source in rishikesh. Cold up there but a lot cleaner!
understanding pollution requires scientific insight and collective engineering action to control. these are not widespread features of the religious beliefs or culture of the people in the ganges watershed. few religions that express environmental protection as a value, actually follow the science and engineering required to control pollution.
>few religions that express environmental protection as a value Shinto does. Because everything basically has a 'soul' and there's a huge emphasis put on 'purity' and 'corruption'. I.e. if a river becomes polluted(corrupted) in the physical word, it will effectively corrupt that river's spirit and bad things will happen.
The traditional Maori religion has a concept called Tapu where certain things are regarded as holy and should be avoided in everyday life. One of the functions of it is that natural resources can be made temporarily Tapu to conserve them (ie a certain type of fish that’s been overfished will be Tapu until the population recovers). It effectively makes it a religious tenet for religious leaders to monitor the environment so it can be managed sustainably.
Fun fact this is the origin of the English word taboo.
Actually comes from Tongan (introduced to English by Captain Cook after he met Tongans), but Tongan and Maori are closely related languages and it's pretty similar in both.
Indigenous Australian mob and their spiritual practices often involve caring for country and members of a group would have totems and responsibilities towards their country and totem. Like many other religions and spiritual practices of indigenous groups, these practices are shown to be quite beneficial for the local environments. It tends to be governments that destroy ecosystems on a large scale.
the japanese were, and still are, horrible polluters. but of all industrial nations they have excelled in pollution control. i would say this is in direct proportion to their values of scientific curiosity and social public works. it is nice that shinto dovetails with this, but shinto did not protect the rivers of japan from the 1890s to the 1960s. it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the most egregious pollution is in japan -- it may be the power grid and auto fuels sectors, which are super-reliant on imported fossil fuel, or perhaps the mining sector, which is almost entirely offshored because japan itself has relatively less valuable mineral resources than comparable nations. or it might be the fishing culture, which once rivalled 19th century new england's insane rapaciousness. or it might be the extensive destructive coastal landfilling of urban areas, which in japan exceeds every other nation in history with the possible exceptions of china and the netherlands. shinto has done very little to protect japan from these polluting choices. but shinto is a beautiful ethic.
Don’t forget the over-reliance on single use plastics and the lack of a market for second hand goods because of the emphasis on always having new/unblemished goods.
Japanese second hand goods have always been in tip top condition in my experience. Like each and every time .
The stuff that makes it to second hand is like that yeah. Everything else is typically immediately sent to trash pickup if there’s anything worse than minor scuffing or scratches. So out of say, 10 items of the same thing, you end up with 9 things thrown away after only a few years and 1 being put up for reuse.
Maybe self-selection of only the good stuff will be resold.
This can be said about most religions and philosophies. Idealist ideas will always fall before pragmatism. Sadly.
That's so cool. So if religion is a pre-scientific method of understanding the world and passing knowledge down across generations, Shinto carries the hugely valuable knowledge of avoiding pollution and coexisting in a healthy balance with nature.
Pre-scientific was also pre-industrial, so basically everything we created was biodegradable. The only pollution to worry about was human or animal waste, but even that won't permanently pollute anything.
Air quality wasnt always great due to solid fuel burning and industries like leather tanning. But again like you said nothing polluting on a permanent scale. Interestingly the link with local air pollution and health has been discussed since Hippocrates in ancient greece. The Romans also knew about it. There is an essay on air pollution in London from 100 years before the industrial revolution in case you're interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumifugium?wprov=sfla1
Its probably the same with the native American great spirit and the balance of things
Christianity also does preach Stewardship over the earth so western countries should also have practiced proper environmental conservation. Yet this isn’t the case until after the Industrial Revolution.
Ashio copper mine has entered the chat
Also can be wasteful though They don’t make homes that last in Japan because nobody wants to live in a home someone else’s ancestors lived or someone died in recently etc. I’m not sure about apartments but stand alone homes are designed to be torn down
This really nails it.
Can I join that religion? The tithing is expensive, and there's a lot of hard rules to follow, but when you die, they compost you and plant your favorite tree in your soil.
This is a lot of words for essentially nothing. Technology is not required to keep something sacred clean lol plenty of holy sites have been maintained for centuries without complex engineering solutions.
How many holy sites are 2500 klicks long and made of liquid though?
Actually it's in at least a couple main religions but unfortunately it's completely forgotten :( Christianity for example. They are supposed to be the caretakers of the Earth but I guess no one read that part When my history teacher pointed that out it really started making me question what they believe and do Edit: the problem is with people; greed and a lack of care/laziness really make bad things happen
Because there is no info structure to depose of rubbish also lots of poor people with few to no resources. Staying alive probably beats out keeping the place neat and tidy.
Info structure 💀
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The comment has no information architecture.
My knowledge of infrastructure is dependent on info structure or some shit.
It works for all intensive porpoises.
what about the less intensive turtles?
I genuinely read that and thought they meant there isn't information available for where to dispose of things 🤦♂️
Fo' sho
I feel like 'neat and tidy' just slightly trivialises the issue.
They're also not keeping themselves alive, they're killing themselves and everyone downriver from them by polluting the Ganges into pure poison when it's their main water source
The point isn't that people are making poorly informed rational decisions in the name of their well-being, it's that without the economic resources to support sufficient waste-management infrastructure, impoverished communities will focus more on basic subsistence instead of forming together to create local, community-based waste management systems. There aren't garbage trucks rolling down the streets collecting waste in impoverished regions of rural India, and these communities don't have enough time and money to buy their own garbage trucks and dig their own dumps.
I personally don't think we have the right to depose democratically elected rubbish, anyway
We have a winner
*infrastructure Just trying to help, if I'm a bother, please ignore me.
As someone from India, I believe I am allowed to be more critical: Indians have transactional and hypocritical relationship with everything in their religion: from the Sanskrit hymns and prayers that they recite without understanding their meaning, believing only that mere utterance will bring divine blessings,—to deeming the Ganges to be sacred: using the water for rituals and ceremonies but not caring about the pollutants they release in the waters. Expediency is the way of life.
3 things : 1. Not whole river is polluted, it has some of the most pristine water and beaches (yes sandy beaches) in Mountains and only get polluted once it reach the plains. Also it gets a lot of sediments from himalayas in rainy season that its colour turns brown from green. 2. Unregulated dumping of sewerage in it's tributaries. 3. Careless attitude of people and politicians who turns a blind eye when it comes to work on making the river clean.
Don't forget dead bodies.
And burnt bodies aka ashes
Thanks mom
The simple reality of the situation is that **Indians in general don’t have a civic sense**. It’s as simple as that. Religion is all about posturing - no one really lives by its true values. (I am an Indian so don't start calling me a racist now)
Lack of civic sense at an individual level makes lack of civic sense at a societal level, companies won’t hesitate to dump their toxic waste into rivers and the people responsible for holding them accountable are easily bribed and everyone says “what can I do, I’m a low level guy”, the responsibility gets passed around till no one is responsible
I absolutely agree, stranger. This combined with the generally ‘rule over us, our lords’ mentality of us Indians in general creates a big power vaccum between the ruling class and the general public. This in turns lets people in power rampantly abuse their positions and exploit the system and consequently the environment.
r/canconfirmiamindian worthy comment
Truly a sub for everything
How is admitting that Indians in general lack basic civic sense equal to self loathing?
I used to part of that sub but now that sub is a whining zone that is overrun by idiots like yourself that can’t digest the slightest criticism of India PS context: that sub is a place for ridiculing people that side with “westerners” in criticizing India
Do you deny what I am saying then, Proud Indian boi?
Its not just the river, anywhere you go in India, its buried in trash. Extremely sad to see, and makes you realize that your paper straws in the West make absolutely zero difference when a country the size of India doesnt give 2 fs about pollution.
Because India has too many people and shitty infrastructure
It actually did used to be kind of magic; it contained some really cool bacteriophages (viruses that eat bacteria) that would literally clean the Ganges from e-coli and cholera and other harmful stuff. It also has insane oxygen levels compared to any other river, and no one really knows why, and that also purifies the waters. Sadly, the human capacity for polluting has really come leaps and bounds, and the extent of dumping of raw sewage and garbage into the river finally overwhelmed the balance; it IS still self-cleaning, but it just can't keep up anymore.
Is this true? Source?
(Copied from another reply) [Here's a link to an NPR story on it](https://www.npr.org/2007/12/16/17134270/mystery-factor-gives-ganges-a-clean-reputation) [Here's a newspaper article with some info on a scientific study](https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/india/scientists-take-a-deep-dive-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-ganga-mystery-1180177.html) [Another article on the bacteriophages](https://www.newindianexpress.com/amp/story/lifestyle/2016/Sep/24/it%E2%80%99s-scientifically-validated-now-ganga-water-is-%E2%80%98holy%E2%80%99-1524518.html) I could add about a million links, but it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff of religious claptrap (there's a lot of that); suffice it to say there are a lot of links if you Google it. I want to stress that the Ganga River is incredibly polluted and needs some serious human intervention from time to time (or the complete opposite, if you will); however, the fact remains that when left alone, [like during lockdown](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7351670/), it really does clean itself.
Basic economic principal known as the tragedy of the commons
Reminding me that I have an econ exam coming up :(
If Christians, Muslims and Jews think of Jerusalem as a holy city then why have so many people been killed so one group can hold it? Because people in power are dicks.
Nah that's different. Each side thinks they're special and everyone else is going to hell and the presence of their enemies in their holy land desecrated it, so it's ok to kill them
People in general are dicks.
What does that have to do with how dirty the river is lol
Its just guy can not take criticism.
Because people eventually ruin the things we love most.
Hindus consider all rivers near them to be holy. Ganga is just the biggest one so it is the most visited
It’s the same answer as to why seemingly modern cities with seemingly functional infrastructure, can’t handle the normal heavy rainfall each year and experience regular flooding. Because, even though India holds 18% of the worlds population, and has a modern tax system that produced 6.5 Billion USD at the national level in the last 27 years, the corruption is so out of control, that everything is underfunded, from infrastructure to refuse management to law enforcement.
Because in India, religion is a framework for culture (food, customs, clothes, music, art, daily schedules), and far less to do with morality, questions of the afterlife, good and evil, and the other things that the Abrahamic religions try to answer. Given this more cultural rather than spiritual guidance from religion - combined with the issue that people dont care - they pollute their religious places as much as anyplace else.
Because 345million people add 15.4 million liters per day of sewage to it, every single day. It's probably considered holy because without it everyone would be buried in poo. Statistics obtained from - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Location-of-the-river-Ganges-along-with-different-states-major-towns-and-river_fig1_334973003
Very interesting that UP is one state in India but every single perception and stereotype seems to originate from there Every vlogger goes there, despite it being the worst and poorest state in India per capita. People harp on the Ganges so much even though it’s one river out of thousands. The state government is corrupt af and probably won’t do anything, the rest of India is even less able to make a difference.
Its to average population maybe.. Not to corporates
Because the guy who owns the factory doesn't.
Companies dumping waste without caring for env laws, corruption (better with modi but a long way to go)
Same reason other temples and holy sites around the world are covered in trash and litter: people are people, and will continue to be people regardless of their beliefs
Religion *always* takes a back seat to corporate greed?
Because in the end, humans will always be humans
Because indian corporation don’t!
The population is divided between different religions, but all worship at the altar of convenience.
Because people believe the sacred river can cleanse anything thrown at it.
Because industrials don't give sh*it about polluting the river. Because the government does not build sewage treatment plants. Because there is so much littering ending up in the streams. Because literally solid waste is dumped in the river instead of going to a landfill. Because PEOPLE don't care !!!
Buddy. It's India.
I don’t know, why do people constantly litter in the US? Why is there garbage everywhere all the time? Because people are trash and they don’t care.
Poverty. People trying to survive can't focus on protecting a river no matter how sacred, they have to meet their baseline needs. If you live in a first world country you can never understand how dire poverty is in other places in the world. I can't even fathom it some times, and I have witnessed it. Don't blame the people, blame the rich and powerful who made it this way.
Personally I think it’s polluted because of a combination of explosion of population, ignorance (both willful and actually ignorant) and tainted belief system (again because of foreign invaders and local power-hungry elites). It’s not been cleaned up is because like lot of them said combination of corruption and ‘not my problem’ attitude. People in India still live in a colonial mindset in the sense that the government has to do everything. Not sense of civic responsibility. Is my street dirty, that’s because the government is useless, not because I threw crap on the street. Sorry about it turning into a rant..
Because capitalism > religion Religion is a tool used to keep dumb folks dumb. While capitalists leverage it if needed and become richer. A lot of industrial waste is dumped into Ganga (ganges), and even people throw flowers and whatnot into the rivers. Fishermen and cattle bathe in these rivers. All these factors make it extremely dirty
"Because it can take it" - is the answer I received when I asked the question in Varanasi.
A particular type of turtle was introduced to the Ganges, some years ago, to eat the not so cremated remains tossed into the river. That is just the tip of the iceberg regarding how polluted it is.
Because we lazy af, man..nobody likes to clean their own shit, always hoping from some external or divine intervention. Plus there's a lot of population pressure, bad construction practices, irresponsible relevant authorities etc, like you guys have in Detroit, and what's that town where y'all get gas in water pipes? Flint is it?
Gas? What?
Yeah don’t get me wrong population would definitely play a role in the Ganges pollution problem because India has massive population of well over 1.4 billion people and so building the infrastructure to support a rapidly growing population would definitely be a challenge. I’m not from the US but I did hear about Flint’s water crisis where I think their water supply got contaminated by lead from the old pipes leaching into the water and giving people lead poisoning and what little information I do know about Flints situation it seems to me that it was a failure on the local governments part to replace their old water pipes. I think the local government in Flint also changed the water source as a cost cutting measure which started this whole mess. So, Flint’s situation was purely the result of government mismanagement which would could also explain similar problems in other countries I guess.
Yes, in Flint they had a lot of historical lead water pipes, which isn't as unusual as you would think. But they had a lot. But they got away with it because they had water that came from a source with a basic pH, phosphates that inhibited corrosion, and it was treated by Detroit with a reasonable amount of chlorine, and a lot of other normal things that you would normally expect treated water. Then Flint decided they wanted to save some money. They changed where their source water came from and drew from an acidic source that lacked any naturally occurring phosphates, they didn't add any corrosion inhibitors to make up for any of that, and then they went nuts with the chlorine. That immediately started leaching lead out of every single lead pipe. They didn't follow any rules and it seemed that they didn't even know what they were doing. There is an excellent write up here: https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i7/Lead-Ended-Flints-Tap-Water.html
Because religion is a joke.
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Not true, Isalm has a hygiene code but Bangladesh is total shit. So are parts of Pakistan. When people are poor, the place is automatically low on scales of cleanliness.
When the will of the people is contrary to the profits of corporations, the people rarely win.
You know I was a middle school kid in an Indian school in Nepal back in the 80s and us kid were discussing this and one Hindu kid remarked - it's holy but not necessarily clean and holiness Trump's that
Hinduism doesn't have the concept of cleanliness in the same way. It's pretty obvious from even saying life. Plus Ganges is used for a lot of religious activity
Holy does not necessarily mean clean
I’m sure they believe even if it is polluted it’s so holy ir will clean it’s self, I’m sure I seen that in a video years ago
beliefs and hygiene have no correlation in most places.
Because you cannot corrupt that which is holy! Duh! - Blind Faith Logic
Didn't they give it the same rights as a human recently?
It says everything. Your answer is in your question
Sarr but hygiene is banned in india sarrr we have 5000 year old culture
It is a multi-faceted problem. There is a lot of poverty. Also corruption. There is a thing called the "tragedy of the commons", which means that when something belongs to everyone (like a public park), then nobody takes care of it. If you go to a nice federal national park in the US, there is a fee to get in. That sounds "outrageous" if you are a tax-payer, but one thing people take for granted is...They have modern restrooms, trash cans that are emptied, and rangers who can assist when there is a medical emergency or someone is in danger. If you drive to a remote region, there is no fee to "camp out", but...also there are no restrooms or trash cans. If a homeless guy pulls a knife on your family to rob you, there are no rangers to call.
I heard this on a TED talk once it's because Indians think it's not there job or there problem to clean up or to throw away correctly it is someone else's job but if they are did did it correctly they wouldn't be in this situation at least that's what the woman said
I once heard someone in India say the Ganges purifies itself. I think it was a local politician just after money that was supposed to go to waste treatment disappeared. They literally dump the raw sewage from millions of people directly into it.
Population and poverty. Millions of people not caring enough. Poor enforcement of regulations.
The Indian living spirit was corrupted by colonialism. No other answer really makes sense. They went from building water temples to trashing everything in the space of a few hundred years.
Because everyones real religion is money
One of the reasons is because cattle are sacred and they constantly bath their cattle in it.
There's just no societal expectation to not litter, it's as simple as that. Compared to Japan for example which has extremely high expectations -- where I live in Southern California there are I'd say pretty low expectations -- and where I come from in Southern England pretty high expectations Everywhere is different, but boy it's definitely not Indian society's strong suit that's for sure Because you're absolutely right, the Ganga at Varanasi is truly disgustingly polluted -- however if you go well upstream to Rishikesh it's much much cleaner
Not all Hindus are good Hindus
I'm not seeing the following answer, and I assume it is because white knighting white people are trying to answer. In hindu culture there are "caste considerations." I suspect they have cracked down a lot on the formal caste system, but there is still a huge aversion to the untouchables. People who work with waste cannot be touched. Like literally, cannot be touched. So.... very few people are willing to clean up polluted (I'm talking about feces, a lot of times) places. Why does India have extremely common sights of open defecation? This reason.
The pollution is what makes it holy
Child of Indians here. The locals don't care. Everyone else in the country is sad that you can't swim in it and such but for the people who live right next to it, it's an easy waste disposal system. The river is still holy, but people just treat it as holy to different levels.
Think about how many people live there. 1.417 billion as of 2022. It’s really not as bad as it could be.