Krishnan and I spent five days in Indore during the last week of March. We were there to conduct a leadership intervention for senior executives of the Eicher Volvo JV there. While Krishnan has visited Indore several times as part of his stint with the USAID project, I have never been to Indore. This was my first visit.
First, I was bowled over by the Eicher Volvo JV’s guest house – it was better than many five star hotel rooms! Second, but even more importantly the food was so good that I didn’t want to eat anywhere else. The program went off really well and the day we were leaving Indore, we had an hour in the morning to visit the famous “namkeen” shops in Indore. While we got a lot of tips from the participants of the program on the shops we were to visit, we only managed to eat breakfast at Apna Sweets…. the Jalebi there has become a favourite of mine and thats a lot. I am ultra finicky about Jalebi :):), ok, I am finicky and very particular about all food items. We asked the driver to stop at a good sugarcane juice shop if it happened to come, enroute to the airport.
The one thing that struck me when we arrived in Indore was how clean the city was …. and that impression got reinforced as the driver drove us through the city to get to the airport. Well, it was also interesting to see the amazing work that the CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan is doing. Our driver was certain that he will get back for a record 5th term and whatever the HMVs are saying in Delhi, PM Narendra Modi is a superhit in Madhya Pradesh. When asked if people will vote for BJP or NaMo, the driver was clear that the vote is for NaMo – it didn’t matter who the candidate was during the General Elections, as long as their vote would ensure that NaMo became the PM. We were thrilled to hear that.
The driver found a sugarcane juice shop just a few 100 metres from the airport and see the picture below … not a single piece of the crushed sugarcane is thrown around. There is a bag to collect it and it apparently is made into fodder for the cows. Just look around his cart and see how clean the place is.
Last week when we saw the article by LogicalIndian that Indore has replaced Mysuru as the cleanest city in India, we were hardly surprised. We would have been surprised if it hadn’t been amongst the top five.
Here’s the link to that article – Indore replaces Mysuru as the cleanest city in India for the year 2017.
There is also another message … however much you hate our PM, the fact is that the Swachh Bharat project is gaining ground and rather than commenting on how a Western city is so clean and India is so dirty, pick up after yourself, keep public places clean, and help in cleaning up our country. You can continue to hate the man, but Swachh Bharat is about cleaning up our house … get going.