A first-time visitor to Delhi I know recently took a trip by train. He had bought some fruits for the journey, had produced a small heap of peels, and was looking for a dustbin to do the civic thing by it. Naturally, he didn't find one. So he went looking for a conductor.

At first, the good railway official could not even understand the foreigner's difficulty. What on earth could anyone want a dustbin for? Then the passenger tried a graphic tack. He pointed to the fruit peels and asked: "Where shall I throw this?" The conductor was flabbergasted. "Where to throw this?" he exclaimed. "Why, man, throw it anywhere you like. Throw it under the seat. Throw it out of the window, or just leave it there. Where's the problem?"

There was, indeed, no problem. If at all it existed, it lay in the thought processes of the tourist, which lacked the skill of reconciling two evidently contradictory elements: a culture which values Sundaram as much as Satyam and Shivam, but which also regards the whole wide world as one big dustbin.

We, in this country, have developed that skill to a fine degree. we can expound upon the loftiest of principles on the unity of the cosmos, where every living creature holds a spark of the divine Brahma, and of the philosophy of `that thou art' (tat twam asi), while practising the philosophy of touch-me-not in our social relations. And now, one might add, in politics too.

In a democracy, such contradictory values are as comic as the spectacle of people who were forced to quit office on charges of corruption yesterday, posing as great crusaders against it today. The tourist was nonplussed by an attitude he was not familiar with -- that an individual's rights can be unrestrained even when they amount to the licence to fly in the face of basic social norms.

Rather paradoxically, I ran into an instance of this while a detenu during the infamous Emergency. We lived as carefree a life as one could dream of, free from all the concerns of what the kitchen requires, no worries about unpaid bills, no charts of the children's temperature to be maintained, or doctors' appointments to be sought, and no unwelcome guests to attend to.

The snag, of course, was that this was no freedom. Something I had read a long time ago -- "A slave is a slave because he is free" -- began to make sense.

The pity is that this condition is generally applicable to us as a nation. We are free to disgorge dirt because we are free to fall ill and to cheerfully maintain one of the highest infant and maternity mortality rates in the world. It is for this reason that a cynic recently commented: "Our ideal of health for all is going to be achieved in the form of malaria for all."

The experience of a friend, just back from a visit to Singapore, is a study in contrast. When he casually threw a cigarette-end in a flowing drain his host, stopped short in a scare and looked around to make sure that no one had noticed. Then, in a whisper, he told his guest never to do it again, because it would attract a fine of $50. Finally, my friend understood why the city's streets were so spick and span.

But the mere fear of penalty is no solution. But a recent report in the papers tells the other side of Singapore's success story. It tells of two 14-year-olds who have won coveted awards for flushing dirty public toilets, removing a wet tissue that was clogging a basin and removing other people's shoe-prints off toilet seats.

The awards were instituted under a Government-coordinated Small Kindness Movement in which attention was drawn last year to public toilets by the Prime Minister, just back from a trip to Europe, when he described clean toilets as `one of the hallmarks of a gracious society'.

Our Honourable Ministers have evidently been much too busy piling up stinking scams to have any time left for such frivolities of grace. But the malady is chronic and calls for a long-term solution.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.