I will surprise you and be Gandhian. Public sanitation is India’s number one problem. We have the hubris to consider ourselves a fledgling superpower on the basis of the accomplishments of the professional classes and some nuclear weapons.

But we can’t seem to keep our streets free from filth. When we show enough respect for each other to clean up after ourselves and make our cities liveable, we will have accomplished several things at once.

We will have recovered our self-respect, we will have given dignity to even the “lowest” manual labor, and we will have eliminated the cause of many of our most widespread diseases. Beauty is as vital to the soul as food is to the body. Without it, we subsist, but we do not have a culture.

Because it despises physical work and the body, Indian society overvalues intellectual work, leaving not enough people to create those un-intellectual, unglamorous, petty businesses that create jobs and drive real economic growth.

So, for me, our first area of focus should be acquiring the self-confidence and humility to criticise and correct this area of darkness in our society.

Are the eco-lovers making more noise than necessary?

D. M.