I did, a requirement to book a guesthouse room through the weekend does not make the moral/legal issues any better.

Imagine that some town in the US did this; and shut down otherwise public roads to anyone who is not a resident or a guest of a hotel in the town for the weekend, citing visitor nuisance as the reason.

Would you feel better about it because "well you can just book a hotel for the weekend"?

I've read that Japan had some crazy pollution and littering until regulations and campaigns in the 70s. Alright, I'll admit, I saw it on a Youtube short [1].

There doesn't seem to be a lot of information on the change on the Internet (at least not the English Internet), but this Japanese guy's anecdotes seem to corroborate it [2]. It makes sense, a lot of countries started taking pollution and littering more seriously around the 70s. It looks like that's when Japan started regulating it seriously [3]:

> from 24 November to 18 December 1970, 14 pollution control bills were passed into law [...] overnight, Japan was transformed from a country with meagre environmental regulations, to one of the strictest in the OECD.

1. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PP60G-lMiDA

2. https://tour-hiro.com/blog/culture/5721/

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_Diet

Yes, on one hand its fascinating, on other its about impossible before end of universe that it would be possible to apply India wide. Right on with Gurugram observation. The latest government way to fix all issue is to change name of the place to something from "glorious Indian past".

In terms of actually responding to eco-disaster I don't think people are there yet to see error and mend their ways. I do not expect this to change at least for next couple of decades.

> Like Gurugram reminded me of some type of ecological disaster dystopia out of Blade Runner

That's because of zoning. Much of Gurgaon isn't zoned as a municipality but as villages or agricultural land, which means there is no unified municipal government in vast swathes of the city. This is the same issue with Bangalore.

Other large Indian cities (eg. Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, etc) are nowhere near as bad

> So I was particularly glad to see this story was about an Indian village

My ancestral family is from village and small towns, and counterintuitively (edit: for people who do not know India) they tend to be much cleaner because they have more formally defined municipal and local governments.

Of course, this depends state to state, like everything else in India.

Edit: quick explaination of local government in India

Local government in India is heavily dependent on whether your block is zoned as "rural", "urban", "agricultural", or "industrial".

In the first generation of megacities like Bangalore and Delhi NCR, zoning never actually got updated because a lot of urbanization happened before zoning caught up, and changing zoning could impact your tax burden, as agricultural income isn't taxed in India.

So if you are a landlord (eg.) running a backpacker hostel in Delhi, if your land was rezoned from agricultural to urban it would also be reassessed from a tax burden perspective so landlords have an incentive to fight rezoning tooth and nail.

Additionally, a lot of areas that are colloquially called (eg.) Bangalore aren't actually within the borders of the city of Bangalore but historically unzoned or miszoned land.

In smaller towns and the newer generation of megacities (eg. Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune) zoning was more tightly enforced and local governments are more aligned becuase they are much more homogenous.

This is something the PM Office is now starting to address [0], but will also depend on local and state governments. Some states like Kerala, HP, TN, Punjab, and Gujarat have been more proactive about fixing zoning, but others like Delhi and Karnataka have been less inclined.

[0] - https://eacpm.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/EAC-PM-Worki...

You hit the nail on the head. It's not that simple. I was born and raised in India and I have seen hordes of supposedly "educated" Indian people with degrees littering and making a nuisance of themselves; and seen a lot of Indians who didn't have a formal education be much more conscientious about cleanliness and such because their family raised them that way.

It's some combination of moral education, culture, science, and psychology. Even religion can play a role, especially in India where it's so important for a majority of the people.

More like, the education thus far was insufficient, not that it's not simple to just have education; it is that simple, but simple does not mean easy or without effort. Japan instills cleanliness from early schooling, that's what needs to be done in India too. Not just throwing up our hands and saying "it's not that simple."

Hopefully the process is sped up with the rapid increase in Indians traveling internationally, and they'll start to realize and feel embarrassment/shame at the state of cleanliness in their own country.

> If it were so simple this would've been solved nation wide by Modi's 2014 address.

What? How is this supposed to work?

That is a sensitive messaging campaign, and no doubt true as well. But the effect is that rich people who want to visit on the weekend will book a local hotel stay rather than day trip, and as a bonus they will not have to deal with crowds.

They already have a levy on cruise ships, but it doesn't really increase the amenity for the citizens. If you can bid for places in the cap you have a dual effect, limiting congestion and encouraging longer stays, and selecting for higher value ships.

You could tweak it in many ways, like additional levy that can be recouped by spending on food in local restaurants (vs shipboard all-inclusive meals).

> in my experience Americans are Nazis about littering and recycling.

America is a really big place.

My "progressive" American city has a lot of litter, because there is no money to clean it up or punish litterers.

I've been in quite a few American cities where recycling bins simply do not exist.

> in my experience Americans are Nazis about littering and recycling

I don't know about that. I've seen many a poorly sorted recycle bin in my life. Americans are definitely in the upper quartile, maybe even the upper decile, of the world as a whole. Among the developed world the country may be just about average.

I believe glass recycling is segregated by color in some countries in Europe. And they take that really seriously.

Have have you been to many countries in Asia recently?

Spitting is still super common in many cities, especially in India. I've had a few taxi drivers who would open their door periodically to spit on the ground (and no they weren't chewing anything).

I've got a suspicion that it was more common a few decades ago. I saw a bit of that in China back in 2007 but I wouldn't be surprised if it's less of a thing now.

Same here. I find it hard to understand people who litter.

Does that Declaration give you an inalienable right to do anything you please? I doubt it. As the old saying goes, your freedom stops where someone else’s freedom starts.

Or in Seinfeld speak, “we live in a society!!!”

Have to consider others not just oneself. That’s the price of freedom and being responsible about it.

The alternative is a nanny state or anarchy.

Nothing is stopping you from travelling within the borders. A village is nothing more than a province within the state.

If the law ruled: "you may not traverse through the state on Sundays"; then one could argue that is a breach of human rights.

However, the last time I checked, detours exist. Enabling you to bypass a village that may be closed on Sundays.

If you're a tourist and a village says no, why can't you obey that, why does that upset you?

India doesn't give a shit about that. They have restricted civil areas that require visitor clearance even for citizens.

Ask the US Army. /s

The new editorialised title is an improvement, given that most of HN's readership is probably not in the UK, especially not at time of writing: 0130 BST on a Tuesday.

I prefer the maximalist perspective: France is West Asia.

India?

so is Israel and Australia but you dont call them Asians do you

One of the most dirty places on Earth. Surely this cannot be true. I’ve been to ten dirtier cities in India alone than that, let alone the rest of South and South East Asia. I suppose in some sense every city is one of the most dirty places on Earth even if you rank 500 on some list but it cannot be useful to think of it like this.

I'm sorry but your comment has no effect on the force of that person's confirmation bias.