Swachh Bharat: Art of doing small things

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s thrust on austerity reminds me of a saying I would see written in my school bus: "Anushashan hi desh ko mahaan banata hai" ("Discipline makes a nation great"). Every time the prime minister invokes Swami Vivekananda, my childhood memories come rushing back, when my father would tell me stories about him.

For me, Vivekananda was a symbol of all things Modi today so passionately espouses – discipline and austerity. One who believed you could become big by doing small things.

Like Swami Vivekananda in 1893, Modi it seems has also taken America by storm. When Modi says he is a small man and talks big about discipline, I think about Vivekananda, who was not only a great votary of discipline and cleanliness, but was also full of praise for Japan, a country with which our prime minister has developed a special connection.

Vivekananda, who had travelled to Japan, had called the Japanese “one of the cleanest people on earth”. He was impressed by the neatness of their streets and homes and their overall attitudes of the Japanese.

Today, the wisdom will not be lost on millions of Modi's supporters that a country's future depends on its people, and human development, as Vivekananda believed.

Mahatma Gandhi, on whose birth anniversary the nation is taking the "Clean India" pledge, counted Vivekananda among the few reformers who achieved greatness while “cutting down the deadwood of tradition”.

It’s time to cut down the deadwood of tradition in a new India. Modi, I am sure, can’t agree more. There is a message in a PM carrying a broom – "no leader can be bigger than the nation".

We should all do small things to become a bigger person like the great Swami Vivekananda.