[flagged]
By no means correlated.
I'm sorry but your comment has no effect on the force of that person's confirmation bias.
Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
41–50 of 111 posts
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia says that Budapest is home to one of the most populous Christian communities in Central Europe and it's considered to be one the most dirty places on Earth. Rome is often called Europe's dirtiest cities. Also Christian. Either Christ failed there, or religion has nothing to do with it.
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 guess it depends on who you ask. https://bbj.hu/budapest/travel/tourism/budapest-tops-list-of...
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/world-dirtiest-cities-including-on...
https://dailynewshungary.com/budapest-dirtiest-city-tourists...
tourists feel it. It may be that the absolute worst places are the ones nobody goes to and writes home about.
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#43It should be clear that this is about the stress that visiting Indians bring. And their trash. But it also highlights how you need to restrict access to move up the value chain. Hordes of bus tourists who eat elsewhere or bring take away contribute little economically, you can sell some trinkets. People with a hotel booking are also likely to eat locally. Venice faces a similar situation with cruise ships and Airbnbs…
> But it also highlights how you need to restrict access to move up the value chain. Hordes of bus tourists who eat elsewhere or bring take away contribute little economically, you can sell some trinkets. People with a hotel booking are also likely to eat locally.
I don't think this fits the story at all. They just want a day off. The rest of the week is unrestricted.
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#44Reading the title generates imagery of a city in Japan being overrun by foreigners. The actual content is about a self-proclaimed 'Asia's cleanest village' in India, banning Sunday visits from other domestic Indians. Probably wouldn't be a popular story if this was revealed in the title.
The article is on the BBC site, so Asia means India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/etc. Japan is Japan.
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.
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its rooted in culture and how people are socialized to relate to public spaces and the people around them. Here’s Lee Kuan Yew talking about the same problem he faced in Singapore at first: https://medium.com/@barronqasem/the-moral-behind-lee-kuan-ye... (“The difficult part was getting the people to change their habits so that they behaved more like first world citizens, not like third world citizens spitting and lit…
> 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…
> I believe glass recycling is segregated by color in some countries in Europe.
I guess my bar is on the floor lol.
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 guess it depends on who you ask. https://bbj.hu/budapest/travel/tourism/budapest-tops-list-of... https://sg.news.yahoo.com/world-dirtiest-cities-including-on... https://dailynewshungary.com/budapest-dirtiest-city-tourists... tourists feel it. It may be that the absolute worst places are the ones nobody goes to and writes home about.
Oh “of the top 100 tourist destinations on Euromonitor”. Okay, that’s believable I suppose.
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#47> But in Mawlynnong, children are taught to tidy up from a young age This needs to be a thing everywhere. Education works to resolve most - if not all - social issues.
I know statements like this mean well, but man it's so frustrating. It's the same thing as telling a person with depression to "just be happy".
If it were so simple this would've been solved nation wide by Modi's 2014 address.
Where does this education come from? Leaders, but leaders are product of their social environment. To create this change means to go against the norm meaning someone or a few have to break the trend. Then that belief has to take hold in others and THEN the real test begins. It has to be generational, the new generation, by yes, education, needs it to be truth as opposed to a new way. The old guard must die.
Only then will you "solve all social issues by education". Don't even get me started on scale. It works on a village or small country, but more? or a 2nd issue?
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#48> 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.
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. Singap…
> 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...
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Singap…
> 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…
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.
Re: Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
#50As someone born and brought up in India, I'm a little conflicted about this.
Of course it is true that a lot of Indians have no civic sense, and will spit, litter, and generally make a noisy nuisance of themselves in this quiet village. On the surface it seems to be a great story about that nuisance being kicked out one day of the week.
At the same time, this is part of...India. It seems questionable legally, and also morally, to just kick out people from the rest of the country and even the state on a a specific day. Your village benefits to some degree from their taxes. How would it be if the villagers were locked into their village for that day and not allowed to travel outside?
Is the solution to a lack of civic sense really just to make more and more of these clean enclaves? Will they finally end up expanding and covering more of the country? I would honestly feel better about this if the entire state of Meghalaya had some kind of cleanliness drive and a tourist tax.
I don't have any easy solutions. If I did, they would have occurred to someone in India and it would be a lot cleaner by now.