Dharavi (Mumbai) photo by lecercle.
The Ugly Indian is a website and a sort of movement. The site itself is a nice old-school bit of hypertext story telling. Reminds me a bit of HyperCard. The movement seems like shramadana, or people cleaning their own neighborhoods up (as opposed to waiting for politicians or NGOs). They start from a premise that it’s not external factors that are the problem, it’s the Ugly Indian.
It’s time we admitted that many of India’s problems
are because many of us are Ugly Indians.Look at any Indian street, we have pathetic civic standards.
We tolerate an incredible amount of filth.
This is not about money, knowhow, or systems.
This is about attitudes. About a rooted cultural behaviour.
The Ugly Indian can take the world’s best systems
and find a way around it. Even outside India.
Streets in Indian-dominated suburbs overseas
are good indicators of this lack of civic sense.
Ask those who have visited Southall (London),
Edison (New Jersey) and Little India (Singapore)
It’s time for us Ugly Indians to do something about this.
Only we can save us. From ourselves.
Which is kinda true. India is dirty, and nobody does anything. The site is not, however, cynical. It shows how simply changes – like putting flowerpots in a dumping area – can influence behavior and spread. People generally dump where other people dump, they follow. If you just lead in a different direction, they’d just as easily follow you there.
It’s not rocket science.
It’s a combination of espionage, persuasion, emotional blackmail and leading by example. And dogged persistence. This is all about changing the Ugly Indian’s behaviour.
It’s also about ignoring the skeptics who appear and say ‘don’t waste your time. This won’t work.’ There are many such people floating about ! (The Ugly Indian)
I must say that Sri Lanka is cleaner than India (in general), but we still get pretty dumpy. We could all use a little shramadana.
Check out The Ugly Indian. Interesting little hypertext story.
Its quite sad how some parts of Mumbai are filthy and some are cleaner than the cleanest parts of Colombo.
I guess it is the Indian attitude. They really don’t know or give a damn. Remember the Commonwealth Games last year. The Indians have no idea about the proper standard of clean because they are quite used to living in the filthy standard.
Really cool ideas… most of those problems affect Sri Lanka as well, though much less severely. But it’s very cool that people are taking it on themselves to clean up the mess… :)
behavior is contagious. Try yawning in a crowded room
Yeah? Well here’s a little sociological experiment you may or may not want to conduct in order to prove this theory – drop your pants in the street and take a dump in front of everyone, Yindian style. If everyone else follows suit, your hypothesis is correct. If you get your ass kicked, it might mean you’re wrong…
Actually taking a dump by the side of the road, river and canal banks used to be quite common in SL a couple of decades ago. I grew up in northern Colombo and it wasn’t an uncommon sight, particularly since many homes hadn’t plumbing. You still see people doing that on beaches. But it has got fairly rare today. Contrary behaviour isn’t necessarily contagious, but progressive behaviour is.
Simple solution to a growing problem of supreme filth. Eradicate the cause of the problem!! No Indians….no problem
Why not just poke out your eyes? Then you won’t notice the dirt.
Hik hik. I was laughing my as_ off while reading this.
The first sentence should read “It’s time we admitted that many of India’s problems are because many of us are Indians are Ugly .” Hik Hik :-D
Please don’t call me racist for saying a fact.
True or false?
“At first when I arrived in Colombo I was impressed. It was so clean! And the people were so friendly! As far as third-world cities are concerned, Colombo has a lot going for it. The only real stench is the cloud of automotive fumes in the air, as opposed to giant pools of festering water, exposed and clogged sewers, and man and animal alike defecating where they will. This is is significant improvement. There isn’t even much litter, something unthinkable in an Indian city. Public transport is swift and efficient. Buildings are bland, but not ugly, towers of glass and concrete, rather than plastered brick hulks with the bent steel reinforcing bars still jutting out of the walls. Traffic follows the rules of the road (more or less), and the city is full of policemen and soldiers keeping order and safety for the citizens. What, you may ask, is not to like?
Colombo is massively boring.
The city offers something of a glimpse of the future. It looks out to all the other South Asian metropolises and says “You know, if you do things right, you can be a well-ordered expanse of featureless concrete as well! We can be just like America!”
http://ghostfacebuddha.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/on-badness-of-colombo-and-other-matters.html
Colombo is your typical 3rd world city. It is not even a “real” city. I mean, nobody lives in Colombo Fort area. It’s dusty, dirty, smelly, disorganized, ugly, noisy and in an advanced state of disrepair. Traffic is horrible. 75% of people in Colombo live in shanties and slums. You have to mad to say anything good about it. You are obviously living in complete denial, just like the Indians who think they are going to be a “superpower” in a few years.
You are right about Colombo being boring. How many restaurants are there in Colombo?? Answer is NONE. Restaurants inside the hotels don’t count. I mean real restaurants. Colombo is an unplanned ugly city. It is also not organized. I don’t think you can blame politicians. We are just not advanced enough to have even a 2nd rate capita city. We are that unsophisticated.
I completely agree with sharanga, who said in another post that ” Our morals developed in African Savannahs”. Absolutely true. We are just not advanced or evolved enough as a “race” to handle the European way of living, which is is way of life now. I mean we don’t live in mud huts with thatched roofs anymore don’t we???
What is your opinion of this?
“Then a quick swim back at the hotel and then falling into an exhaustion coma. What a day! But our whirlwind holiday wasn’t over yet. We had Colombo to visit before getting on a plane back to stinky Chennai. Colombo, being the capital, has a denser population than Negombo and this is where you can start to see some of the poverty. Our tour guide, Jerom says that Sri Lanka has “75% poor people”. But he also said that the population of Sri Lanka is about 2-3 Million – it’s actually about 21 Million, so who knows.
The city is still much cleaner than Chennai. The footpaths are clear, the air is fresh (the rain helps) and even the rickshaws are shiny.
Overall, I absolutely loved Sri Lanka. I would love to stay there longer. Much longer. If we were offered time in Sri Lanka instead of Chennai, I wouldn’t even hesitate. There is so much more to see than we could see in one weekend. One day we will go back. Hopefully.”
http://www.toushkalee.com/2012/05/colombo-sri-lanka.html
I agree completely. Colombo is much better than Chennai. I have been to Chennai and it is nothing but a garbage dump. But both are horrible. I went Kandy last week and boy didn’t I get a shock of my life. It is like a mini version of Colombo. Terrible.
The world’s next SUPERPOWER.
http://howichangedcareers.com/2009/04/02/professional-sewer-cleaner-its-no-april-fools-joke/
Be afraid, be VERY afraid!!!
Ha haaa!
Whats a third world? Isn’t this concept a white mans construct to belittle others? Colombo is pretty great in its own way. Fuck off somewhere else if you don’t like it.
Take aways from the trip to Sri Lanka
JUNE 24, 2012
Last week I was in Colombo from Monday June 18, 2012 to Friday June 22, 2012. This was my second trip to Colombo but learnt a lot about the country and it’s people this time.
— The Sri Lankan population is about 21 million which is less than that of Mumbai city alone!!
— Literacy is very high and all cab drivers could read and converse in English.
— The cab drivers did not take me for a ride even once and they plied by the meter most of the times (except for short distances)
— The drivers there respect pedestrians and wait for them to cross at the zebra crossing even without the traffic lights. This is something sorely lacking in India.
— The business people I met literally wowed me. Punctuality is a given there! And meetings are to the point. — Extremely professional people. I actually did more meetings in 5 days than I have done in any Indian city to date! And the people there had no airs about meetings. Not the typical Indian excuses atleast like “Oh I have a meeting / I have a training / I am busy” Blah Blah Blah…. Google could probably give tons of such excuses so typical in India.
— Food is a problem especially for vegetarians and people like me who dislike coconut! I had chicken there also went to Indian restaurants just to get a flavour of the desi food.
— Indian influences – Tons of that. Could see Tata Nanos plying as Taxis, Bajaj Auto & TVS Rickshaws, Maruti 800s and Altos. Saw Ultratech Cement painted on the outside of shops and even saw an advertisement for Nirali non stick cookware (I guess from the name this is an Indian brand:-))
— All in all had a great time there and the weather was awesome too. The rains did not bother me even once which was very nice indeed this time of the year. A lot we can learn from them honestly.
http://manishkamdar.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/1166/
//Colombo is pretty great in its own way//
Whats so “great” about Colombo?? Care to elaborate??
You trust somebody by the name of “Manish Kamdar” from Mumbai, of the filthiest, dirtiest cities in the world. Obviously this Indian bloke found Colombo better. He obviously compared it to his cesspool Mumbai, so obviously it’s better and cleaner.
“The drivers there respect pedestrians and wait for them to cross at the zebra crossing even without the traffic lights. This is something sorely lacking in India.” This proves that this idiotic Indian is either lying or seen just ONE good driver stopping at a pedestrian crossing. Do our drivers really respect pedestrians??
Are we really punctual as this fellow say?? He must have met for his luck one guy one was punctual.
Are our cab drivers good in English. Just saying one word sentences (yes, no, Ok and place names) does not qualify for knowing english.
Here’s what real tourists have to say about Colombo: http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Sri-Lanka/blog-100753.html
makin said “Whats a third world? Isn’t this concept a white mans construct to belittle others? Colombo is pretty great in its own way. Fuck off somewhere else if you don’t like it.”
So, are you saying that Sri Lanka is NOT a 3rd world country??? If not, then is Sri Lanka a developed country???
“Like a true blue Malaysian, I am still trying to find fault with the country. I mean, how can? How can Colombo be better than KL right? Then I look on the streets, trying to spot for rubbish, tissues and plastic wrappers and then I can proudly claim that in KL we have less rubbish than you na..na..na..nana… But then again, I was disappointed. Amazingly the Singhalese are quite clean and so far, I have not seen a single person throwing out their tissues from car windows or even the windowless tuk tuks. How can?!! Then, I think to myself – maybe they don’t use tissues, they use their sleeves! Hmmph…
You can also see that even the public area, the beach near the Galle Face Hotel was spotless and clean. Try looking at our very own Batu Feringghi beach and you’ll be surprise to find that Malaysians in general like to litter. This is one thing we all should learn from people in Colombo. Apart from dirty beaches, we are also quite famous about our filthy toilets. I mean, who would have not realise it by now? Even the ones at our KL International Airports still smell and some of the cubicles are out of order but I find the toilets in the Colombo Airport dry and clean. So embarrassing I tell you.. Doesn’t this makes you wonder why?
People there are quite nice too. Most of them can speak English one ok?!!! Even the tuk tuk drivers can have conversations with us when he was busy honking and weaving traffic. Unlike some of our rude cabbies driving an air-conditioned-four-wheeler here, they don’t even understand England!”
http://eiling.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/in-colombo-how-can.html
Problem is, although Indians are clean, they don’t look clean due to their brown skin color. So, to fair skinned people they always look dirty.
Actually, the origin of the term 3rd World doesn’t have an economic perspective, but a political one. The 1st World was the democratic west, the 2nd World was the Communist bloc, and the the 3rd World was everyone else.
I am aware of this classification, but this classification was gradually moved to define developed and underdeveloped countries. So, NOW, 3rd world means, underdeveloped, poor.
Pointless cleaning Indian streets when Indians themselves are ugly!!!
@KP
You are really foolish. WTF do you expect after 30 years of war??? you expect everything to just turn around in a few years. Think before you say anything stupid. We were going to be like Singapore before the war and Singapore wanted to become like us! Next time use your brains(if you had any) before you talk trash. I understand our political history is not good, but just think about what factors caused the current ones. Sri Lanka will become the next asian growth miracle if everything goes smoothly, given the fact that we have a smaller population etc..we just need to change our mentality.
sl don’t want to become a super power and never will be and sl doesn’t want to be dirty as india as above mentioned so…. learn from a poor srilankan how to live cleanly …….as least