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.

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...