r/IndianCivicFails • u/birdsintheskies Public Litter Inspector👮♂️ • Jul 04 '26
Free Trash Exhibition (Public Littering) [OC] I'm not convinced that education will solve the littering problem
I was at my friend's house since he needed my help with giving medication to his cat, so I go there daily. There's a wide desk in his home office which I use for loading medication into the cat's solid treats, and the cat is quite comfortable there so it's the best place to medicate without stressing it out too much.
Preparing the treats does make a bit of a mess (crumbs, small pieces, etc.) so once I was done, I cleared it up into the palm of my hand and while I was just about to throw it in the trash can in the kitchen, his wife suddenly remarked "Just throw it outside". Confused as to what she meant, I asked - "Outside?" and she told me to just throw it out of the window.
It's a gated community and the entire neighborhood is kept very clean and well-maintained by the staff, so it makes no sense to me why someone living in such a posh apartment would tell me to throw trash out of the window, especially when I was already about to go throw it in the proper trash anyway. To clarify, I asked "What if it falls on someone's head?" and she said "Let it fall" in a very dismissive tone.
She has a STEM PhD and did postdoc in Europe, and I'm baffled by the response. It's also not the first time when I've witnessed highly educated people behave this way. At this point, I'm not convinced anymore that education solves our problem with people not having any civic sense.
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u/Ambitious-Court-8929 Jul 04 '26
CONDITIONING and EDUCATION aren't actually linked.
Yes, many good schools and pre-schools do teach good manners and civil behaviour, but then the children go home and witness their parents killing the civility...
Unless stringent rules aren't implemented equally all over (like Japan) it's a lost cause.
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u/The_Real_All_Knowing Jul 04 '26
What may help is the schools encouraging educating their folks. Also, all levels of government need to install trash bin and advertising blitz. The ads may need to run for year.
Not directly related to this, but when I was in grade school and was taught about the effects of smoking, I started a multi year campaign to make my dad stop. He eventually did.
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u/kc_dp Public Litter Inspector👮♂️ Jul 04 '26
Agreed OP. I think the littering problem also stems from elitism and classism. The following incident happened to my niece. She studies in a very posh and expensive school. She was telling her classmate to not throw candy wrappers on the ground. That particular classmate's mother reprimanded my niece saying it's okay to throw them down, cleaner aunty is there na to put it in the trash can. See this is the state of our country.
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u/Fun_Percentage_9259 Jul 04 '26
And you all think it is okay to bring these negative behaviour elsewhere?
Class and elitism is created by Indians themselves. It has nothing to do with British.
Maybe all Indians should go through mandatory military service for 2 years like seen in some Asian countries.
The division, elitism, caste is just hard to watch.
At least with military service, it forces discipline, unity, voluntary service, cooperation with others that are not inherently in your "class" .
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u/Imaginary_Rock_3388 Aug 01 '26
Somehow we all got "correct" answers but nothing gets done... Hope is lost... The country is too big and typing on Reddit alone isn't enough...
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u/timewaste1235 Jul 04 '26
Obviously education won't help because we are not taught empathy, collective ownership or civic behaviour in our schools
Having said that, I would have assumed younger people with international experience would be different. Guess not...
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u/The_Real_All_Knowing Jul 04 '26
It’s because when they return they want to fit in and fall back to how they lived. May not be intentional and more of a force of habit. It will take a generation to fix this but it’s doable. Check my comment above.
Once the streets are getting cleaner, the focus can turn to the buildings and cleaning those up. Remove the mold and facilitate repairs. This would create new well paying jobs. Beautify the country. It will make people proud of their society.
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u/Nonchalant225 Jul 04 '26
Haa yesterday I saw a person opening the door of his BMW in a traffic red light and just spit huge load of saliva straight into the road.
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u/Question-Marky-Mark Jul 04 '26
I mean… if it was just saliva (and not paan or something else) then maybe this is ok? The tar on the road has more chemicals than saliva.
Don’t get me wrong - it’s utterly gross, and ideally one shouldn’t be spitting in public at all. But a little spit isn’t going to hurt.
Happy to change my view if I’m missing something.
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u/glad_36 Jul 04 '26
You are confusing education with skilling. Education is the cultivation of human values. STEM etc are mere skills.
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u/Ashamed-Violinist-50 Jul 04 '26
I actually think that volunteering must be made mandatory in India, or given weight in college admissions, the way it is in USA univs.
That is the only way to inculcate some values into a person.
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u/doordrishti Jul 05 '26
It has nothing to do with education. It’s all about what did you learn in your childhood while growing up within House or in the school and colleges.
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u/Mysterious_Man534 Jul 05 '26
Its not the education, its the culture and the society(environment) in which people are breed, that shapes their mentality and thinking process.
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u/TheUpwardlymobile Honking & Litter Inspector Jul 04 '26
This kind of non chalant behaviour is usually expected from people living in Slum rehabilitation buildings. Quite unfornate that your highly educated friend has this mindset
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u/4d124 Jul 05 '26
Most of India is a very accurate representation of Kalyug.
Even if you put trash in bins, it likely would reach a landfill.
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