Cities in the country are figuring in the news columns of dailies highlighting their state of cleanliness, as measured by over 30 parameters, and are also being ranked in their descending order of rating. Mysuru was bestowed top billing for two consecutive years (2015 and 2016) before sliding to fifth spot, with Indore in Madhya Pradesh occupying the perch on the victory stand, also for the past two consecutive years. Urban spaces, known more for their insanitary environs, too have earned attention of the ranking agencies, media reports on which don’t seem to have generated any interest or enthusiasm on their part to vie for the honours. The civic authorities of both classes of cities owe a good measure of credit and discredit respectively in the business of keeping urban spaces fit for living in comfort and free from afflictions. Citizens of Mysuru, after the initial euphoria on being rated as the land’s cleanest city, have just received a wakeup call as it were to be aware that cleanliness shall be their 24×7 agenda.

Profiling India’s cities as well as towns, currently racing to 10,000 and villages numbering six lakh as a wild estimate, from specific social and economic angles makes a highly revealing and rewarding exercise. Disillusioned urban residents, who find themselves in a neither-here-nor-there state of mind and disenchanted rustics taking a peek at moving to cities, as being witnessed nowadays across the country, leaves one aghast to imagine where the action is taking the land’s masses to.

If it is economic stress that is bugging the nearly 800 million rustics due to unviable returns from their major calling agriculture, it is social stress that urbanites have brought upon themselves with consequences that are there for all to experience helplessly. The two major social consequences of stress in daily life bugging the urbanites, a) lawlessness and b) declining interpersonal relationships, are traced to utter disregard to discipline on their part, particularly outside the boundary of their residences. Almost everyone faces rude situations for just pointing out a traffic mistake such as jumping the red signal by a co-traveller. Two-wheelers being a law-unto-themselves, persons at the wheel of moving automobiles talking on mobile phones, driving vehicles on one-way streets in the wrong direction, tossing plastic bags carrying domestic waste on road-sides in residential areas, easing oneself in full view of passersby and so on give the familiar profile of our cities.

Good Samaritans in society, whoever are still there, only earn a glowering look from the offending flock when given unsolicited advice on preventing their city suffering its ugly underbelly. One shall be thankful if the act of good samaritans doesn’t result in road rage.