Brooms Dating Back to 2000 BCE? Why Do Indian Towns and Cities Still Use Them to Clean their Streets?
Every time I visit India, and my hometown of Bengaluru, the fifteen million plus megalopolis, I am struck by the sight of mostly women, using brooms made of reeds, bending from their torso down, sweeping the city’s streets. That we still use these kinds of brooms at home also goes to show either our unwillingness to change or our apathetic attitude towards those who do such cleaning of our houses — who are mostly housemaids.
Thus, when I came across a news item that Indore City had once again been ranked the cleanest city in India, five years in a row, and then saw this picture accompanying the news report, I was struck by the incongruity of it all.
Are we still stuck in 2000 BCE, using what at that time people gathered and tied up to sweep their hearths and homes? I wondered why all those mayors and members of city councils who have regularly gone on jaunts to Singapore or Tokyo or London on “study visits” have not taken the one simple step of getting their employees something as simple as a modern broom — with strong bristles attached to a stick? I mean, come on, even in Baghdad and Kabul they use those after they had a suicide bomber blow himself up and every kind of debris and every little bit of bone and flesh and blood is spattered all over…