CORPORATE CITIZEN CLAPS FOR PUNE-BASED COUPLE RAJA NARASIMHAN AND PRITI RAJA FOR THEIR ‘ANTI-SPITTING’ ROAD DRIVE UNDER THEIR NGO ‘SARE JAHAN SE ACCHA’ AND SLAPS THOSE PEOPLE WHO SPIT ON ROADS, SHOWING THEIR LACK OF CIVIC SENSE AND PUBLIC HYGIENE

By adding adventure to their arduous task of changing mindsets, the couple have travelled countrywide in their inimitable decal-covered SUV with anti-spitting messages.

Running the ‘Do not Spit’ campaign from Pune for the past 7-8 years, they have covered Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, and recently stirred public awareness in West Bengal.

Former Corporate executives, Raja and Priti, realised that ‘public spitting’ needed a focused understanding beyond the purview of the National ‘Swach Bharat’ mission and other cleanliness drives.

“We are often passive onlookers when people around us litter or spit. Spitting is rampant all across India, baring a few Southern Indian states,” said Raja. Therefore, the trigger point was to bridge the gap with the correct information. “If you do not give information, you cannot expect people to change, even over decades,” said Priti Raja. She reiterates that cleanliness goes beyond cleaning dirty walls and that 50% of all our diseases start from saliva. “Spitting has graver outcomes and goes beyond dirtying the streets or public properties,” she said. Raja and Priti intertwined their ‘anti-spit’ mission through road journeys beginning in 2011-12.

Pandemic shot

Despite Lockdown 1.0 easing out, Raja and Priti were restricted by Covid-19 protocols and unable to hold public gatherings, workshops, or events. “Instead of taking a personal holiday, we thought of clubbing our love for travel with our ‘Do Not Spit’ message, through road drives,” said Raja.

They initially began their drive in March 2020, touring Maharashtra, but the 2nd wave of infections restricted travel movements. They resumed their campaign on February 14, 2021.

The couple will continue to travel through various states and districts and end their current run at the India Gate, New Delhi, on February 14, 2022.

Clean Measure

Raja’s observation travelling across the 11 states is that most parameters in ‘Swach’ surveys do not include spit marks. “It is not about a city being visually clean but about communicating that spit is also garbage and carries more diseases, particularly respiratory illness. Stopping people from spitting in public can avoid this,” said Raja.

While the ‘anti-spit’ road campaigns cannot be measured, certain campaign elements can depict the community impacts.

The couple have been distributing small (1x1 inch) paper stickers with the simple message – ‘Do Not Spit’. They stick these paper messages on the sleeves of clothing on people they interact with at railway stations or bus stands, and during their long-distance road-drive campaigns.

“We have multi-lingual stickers and so far, would have distributed about 50,000 such stickers, which has therefore impacted 50,000 individuals”, said Raja. The expectation is that an individual will go ahead and spread the message to others.

They have collaborated events with the local municipal corporations, the Rotary or the Lions clubs. Positive impacts were seen with the Guntur and Gangtok Municipal Corporations. Impressed by our campaign idea, the Guntur Municipal Corporation, invited them to organise a local campaign. “The municipal commissioner flagged off the event that garnered much media coverage and sparked off the seriousness behind the anti-spit idea,” said Raja.

They had collaborated remotely with the Gangtok Municipal Corporation via the local Rotary club. Despite their physical absence, they managed to drive the campaign with materials such as hoarding, and pamphlets dispatched from Pune. “While such drives cannot always justify 100% involvement, the spark ignited can take it forward”, said Raja.

Lately, the couple have been targeting students to run their campaigns based on the 11-people exercise. “Students have to list down 11 people from their immediate neighbourhoods or localities and educate them on anti-spitting, who in turn pass it on to their immediate 11 local individuals and the message is spread like a geometric progression.”

Evoking Scientific Awareness

Priti is worried that despite certain offices and buildings having the ‘Do Not Spit’ signboards, people remain uneducated about the scientific cause of the disease. “Unfortunately, there are no educative material or awareness built to tell people even today when we have been told to mask up, that spit is dangerous to health,” said Priti.