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Garbage is a huge problem. This photo was taken in Port Blair while waiting for the ferry to take us to Havelock Island, but it could have been taken anywhere in India. Not a day goes by when we don’t catch at least one debilitating snootfull of the stuff.

To those neo-spiritualists looking to India for enlightenment, I point here. Maybe we can start with public sanitation, and work up more gradually to the soul?

All smart-assery aside, it is difficult to seriously criticize a nation of over a billion people, largely employed, many of whom are barely partially literate, and who speak any of hundreds of different languages; a nation as peaceful and tolerant, both inwardly and outwardly, as India. There are clearly some solutions in play here, even if they are hard for an outsider to see. If there is an evident garbage problem, if there may be a caste-driven mindset of, “someone else will do it,” even if the final “someone else” in that chain is a COW, literally a sacred cow, who am I to say it is not the least problematic of available options at this time? Just don’t call it enlightenment… yet :)