Ram Teri Ganga Maili was Raj Kapoor's final masterstroke, a fitting denouement to a brilliant career spanning many decades! Who can ever forget those sexy semi-nude scenes of the film's heroine, the nubile Mandakini! The sizzling song and dance sequences, where Mandakini is in a wet sari flashing her perk breasts, was naturally erotic. But the scenes were sublime as well. Hers was an everlasting and enduring success. Her beauty mesmerized every Indian. Only a master director like Raj Kapoor could conjure the cinematic power to use the sex appeal of the heroine to highlight the problem of pollution in the Ganga. The message of the film was that while Ganga's origination in the Himalayas is pure by the time it reaches the last leg of its journey in Bengal, it is maili (polluted).

Despite being venerated as a goddess, the river Ganga is today totally chocked with filth and so are most other rivers in the country. But if the state of the rivers is bad, the condition of our towns and cities is even worse. The slums proliferating in all Indian cities are by themselves huge garbage dumps, with people packed together in unhygienic and claustrophobic spaces. When the space does not allow the construction of latrines for individual households, or even sufficient number of communal ones, the slum dwellers are forced to use the outdoors – the roadsides or railway tracks - as their bathroom. Fecal matter lying around and overflowing drains crisscrossing the slums become happy breeding grounds for all sorts of diseases. On many occasions the drains leak into the water supply resulting in outbreak of epidemics.

Many health experts believe that 1994 plague epidemic that took many lives in Surat could spread so rapidly primarily because of the unhygienic conditions of its slums. About thirteen years have passed since that infamous plague, but we seem to have learned no lesson. The state of our towns and cities has gone from bad to worse. Delhi's garbage problem is a nightmare for people living here. It is difficult for you to take a walk on any street without encountering an overflowing garbage dump spreading its miasma of stink. Delhi is producing millions of tons of garbage on a daily basis, and the government simply has no clue where to dispose the waste. Much of the waste is dumped directly into the Yamuna River, as a result of which the river has turned into a stinking drain filled with dark and thick sewage.

If the condition of city slums is bad, in villages it is even worse. Most villages being bereft of piped water forces people to depend on rivers and ponds, or springs and wells open to the air and subject to contamination. There is no dearth of contemporary studies that prove beyond doubt that open water increases the incidence of typhoid fever. And if quality of water matters than so does the quantity of water. Water-borne infections, such as diarrhea, are mostly transmitted by the fecal contamination of food, dishes and hands. With many parts of the country reeling under chronic water shortage, for many Indians a unhygienic lifestyle is the only way of life possible. Even at places where water is not a problem, villagers continue to prefer outdoors as a toilet, and that leads to contamination of the environment.

It is not as if the problem is insurmountable; a hygienic lifestyle is the most easily achievable target if there is dedicated action on part of the government and also from the people. People in our towns and cities need to be convinced that a hygienic lifestyle is in their own interests. But the biggest polluters in our country are not its citizens; it is the government agencies. The government agencies dump massive amounts of wastes in our rivers and lakes. These agencies are in serious need of reform. They have to be forced to incorporate modern methods of garbage disposal. Sometimes pollution takes place in name of religion. During the times of festivals people immerse huge idols made out of plaster and many kinds of poisonous chemicals and paints into lakes, seas and rivers, polluting them forever.

If we look back in our history, we will be surprised to find that a hygienic lifestyle has been a part and parcel of Indian culture for thousands of years. The earliest covered sewers discovered by archaeologists are in the regularly planned cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. In the year 2500 BC, the people of Harappa in India had water borne toilets in each house that were linked with drains covered with burnt clay bricks. Sanitation is an important public health measure, which is essential for the prevention of disease. The ancient inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization understood this, but that ancient instinct for cleanliness is all but dead now. The denizens of the modern India don't care at all about hygiene and cleanliness.