A PSA video shared by business tycoon Ratan Tata on Instagram is hard-hitting and heartbreaking at the same time. The ad video shows a boy telling a poem in a recitation competition at school.
The boy starts the poem by saying “Mera baba desh chalata hai (my father runs the country).” The young one then goes on to say that his father is not a politician, doctor, police or lawyer, yet he is the one who runs the country. In fact, he is the one without whom the country will stop.
With the poem unfolding in the background, the scene in the video changes to slowly reveal the job of the boy’s father – he is a manual scavenger. The poem them tells how the country will come to a standstill if the manual scavengers doesn’t work.
Eventually, it shows a sanitation worker climbing down a sewer. At the same time, the boy explains how Indians don’t segregate dry and wet waste. It forces his father to dig deep inside gutters, making him vulnerable to diseases and even death.
The video ends with the boy reciting, “desh ko desh ka har aadmi chalata hai (each citizen of a country runs a country).”
{{/usCountry}}The video ends with the boy reciting, “desh ko desh ka har aadmi chalata hai (each citizen of a country runs a country).”
{{/usCountry}}Shared by Ratan Tata as a part of Mission Garima, the PSA video spreads awareness about the brave sanitation workers. As mentioned in the captipn, the initiative is “working to provide safe, hygienic and humane working conditions for sanitation workers.”
“In Mumbai, a city of 23 million, only 50,000 individuals are employed as sanitation workers,” Tata wrote. “They are working in difficult conditions every single day to tackle the enormous amount of waste that Mumbai generates,” he added.
In his post, he further wrote about another initiative called #TwoBinsLifeWins – “campaign urging citizens to segregate their biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste.” Further adding, it helps to “reduce the burden on these hardworking men and women.”
Here’s the video:
Since being shared about an hour back, the video has gathered close to 98,000 views – and the numbers are only increasing. People dropped all sorts of comments on the post. While some applauded Tata for the initiatives, others wrote that manual scavenging should be stopped.
“Sir, this country has been really lucky to have you. Thank you for being so generous, humble and true to the values, always! You’re an inspiration to the young population of this world!” wrote an Instagram user. “This is the sad truth of India,” commented another. “This should be stopped,” wrote a third.
Back in September, 2019, the Supreme Court expressed concerns over people dying during manual scavenging and said that the workers are sent to “gas chambers to die”.
“This is most inhuman to treat the human beings like this,” the bench observed,” the bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra said about the case.