> In a country known for its lack of sanitation, this is no small feat. But in Mawlynnong, children are taught to tidy up from a young age, with many taking to the streets each morning before school to sweep the town of dead leaves and empty rubbish bins. Villagers see to the disposal of biodegradables and take pride in public landscaping.

Culture is real.

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hn_throwaway_99 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is kind of fascinating to me because the few times I visited India I was completely gobsmacked by the insane levels of trash and pollution such that I never wanted to return. Like Gurugram reminded me of some type of ecological disaster dystopia out of Blade Runner. So I was particularly glad to see this story was about an Indian village and not one of the usual "amazingly clean Asian city" suspects, e.g. Singapore or somewhere in Japan.

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Rendello 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

	▲	profsummergig 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are no consequences for bad behavior in India if you are powerful enough (e.g. a police constable is a very very powerful person who can be filmed taking a bribe or filmed thrashing some innocent person and nothing happens to them.) When they are able/willing to enforce consequences for bad behavior, most of India's civic problems will evaporate.

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geodel 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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alephnerd 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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...

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quadrifoliate 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> My ancestral family is from village and small towns, and counterintuitively they tend to be much cleaner because they have more formally defined municipal and local governments.

Indian, and this is not counterintuitive to me at all. I have also seen this, really small rural villages with their tight local governments tend to be pretty clean.

	▲	alephnerd 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yep. The added issue is half of the "cities" non-Indians visit in India aren't actually zoned as cities. In essence, India had hidden urbanization occur [0], but zoning never caught up to it. [0] - https://eacpm.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/EAC-PM-Worki...

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hn_throwaway_99 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seems like quite the stretch just to blame it on zoning. Gurugram was particularly bad but the other places around New Delhi I visited weren't much better.

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kaycey2022 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Blaming it on “culture” makes me feel good about myself and my in-group.

	▲	alephnerd 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not a culture thing though. The ethnic groups and castes that dominates Gurgaon and Delhi local government also dominates local government in the Chandigarh Capital Region (CCR) as well as other urban agglomerations in Haryana such as Karnal and Kurkushetra which are all much better managed than Gurgaon. The key difference is zoning is nowhere near as screwy in those metros compared to Gurgaon. Gurgaon's urbanization in 1990s to 2010s was completely unplanned. It was the literal Wild West. Same with Bangalore compared to other large metros in Karnataka like Mangalore and Mysore.

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alephnerd 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Much of Delhi isn't zoned as a city either but as villages (in Delhi they are called Lal Doras) [0]. Most of the hostels and hotels backpackers stay in when visiting Delhi are located in these lal doras.

Additionally, the local government and the federal government have been at loggerheads for over decade because it's municipal government was ruled by the BJP but it's state government was ruled by the opposition (AAP), so both attempted to undermine the other.

Delhi NCR and Bangalore are two of the worst managed metropolitan areas in India from a local government perspective because of overlapping jurisdictions and extremely wonky zoning. Of course, those are the two Indian cities most HNers historically ended up visiting.

That said, it's highly likely most non-Desi HNers haven't visited India since 2020 because most businesses now send Indian Americans directly to India and India was never a strong tourism market aside from diaspora.

[0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/lal-dora-villages-delhi-h...

	▲	7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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thesmtsolver2 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most western cities were trays filled till a few decades. Some like SF and Seattle still have zones that resemble a war zone. Have you been to Skid row in LA? Yeah, culture is real.

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alephnerd 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Culture is real

Mawlynnong is barely 3,000 feet from Bangladesh, and the nearest town to it in Bangladesh (Jaflong - roughly 5 to 10 miles away) is much dirtier [0] despite also being inhabited by the same ethnic group (Khasi) as well.

The main difference is, Meghalaya has much stronger local government whereas it's much weaker in Sylhet.

Given that both Jaflong and Mawlynnong are inhabited by ethnic brethren of the same culture, the cultural argument clearly doesn't hold in comparison to the state capacity argument.

[0] - https://maps.app.goo.gl/knutXG7jePr4UhFm8