It has been almost five years since the government kick started its nation wide Swachchh Bharat Mission in 2014. The relevance of this cleanliness focused initiative became manifold, as it came at a juncture where improper sanitation and waste mismanagement had already assumed threatening proportions across India.
The two cardinal components upon which this mammoth campaign was based were ensuring universal sanitation coverage and a systematic management of solid and liquid wastes, both in urban as well as rural India. Given the burgeoning population even in the tier two and three cities across the country, the unusually high daily generated waste volume in them is no wonder at all.
Dehradun which was established as the administrative capital of Uttarakhand nearly two decades ago has experienced a stupendous swelling of its population base. However the management and processing of the total waste which the city generates, continues to remain unsystematic and haphazard.
While appropriate solid waste management is a comprehensive practice encompassing proper segregation, collection, treatment and eventual disposing of waste, one of the most fundamental yet grossly neglected elements of the entire process remains proper discarding. How individual domestic and commercial units dispose their waste has a larger implication for the entire community. Discarding of waste in a designated place and in proper containers is the foremost contribution each one must make to the larger waste management exercise. Here the most overriding question that crops up pertains to the inadequate availability and slim accessibility to proper dustbins.
The Solid Waste Management and Handling Rules 2016, distinctly mandate all households, retailers and hospitality units to segregate their organic and dry inorganic wastes and throw them into separate dustbins. Even a universal colour code of these suitable bins has been decided upon to encourage user level segregation.
However while commercial setups, hospitals and food chains have gradually begun to adhere to these segregation and bin separation guidelines, on a household level a systematic disposal practice is still uncommon. More than a lack of will, what really hampers an effective disposal behaviour is a lack of awareness and accessibility to right waste disposing mechanisms.
Directions were provided under the Swachchh Bharat mission for the distribution of free dustbins to people, especially among the economically weaker sections. Even as per the revised SWM rules of 2016, dustbins have to be compulsorily made available to the public or users, by the municipal authorities concerned. Despite such provisions, there is lack of enough dustbins installed in various areas of the city.
Numerous households have never been sensitised on appropriate waste segregation at source and have not been provided access to green and blue bins. Even in the central areas of Dehradun, for kilometres altogether no dry and wet waste bins can be spotted. Most of the times people get complacent about maintaining hygiene and in the absence of easily available public dustbins resort to dumping food packaging and used bottles recklessly.
Unlike most developed countries there is no provision of separate bins in public buses, recreational parks and market areas. Even where municipal dustbins do exist they are usually found overflowing with uncollected waste and surrounded by stray animals.This is a blatant violation of the fundamental principle of waste management which states that ‘refuse’ or garbage should not touch the ground.
The resulting squalor and stench becomes a huge menace for residents of the surrounding areas as well as passerby. The residents of Sahastradhara, Dalanwala and Mohit Nagar often complain of the infrequent clearing of municipal trash bins. People in these otherwise posh localities often throw the garbage in the empty plots and road corners.
The argument of the municipal officers that they only set up dustbins on the basis of resident’s complaint is a rather flimsy one. Even the NGOs involved in spreading awareness on solid waste management are few in number and reel under a chronic shortage of funds. The essence of Swachchh Bharat campaign is essentially democratic and must involve an eager participation from public. It is the responsibility of all the citizens to ensure setting up of segregated bins outside every residential block, within apartment complexes, outside shops and offices. Similarly, proper bins should be fixed every few metres across all the tourist spots and near the water bodies. This will discourage people from littering the scenic areas in the city and throwing trash in streams and drains. However any real transformation has to begin with empowerment. Enabling people with access to proper disposal apparatus and sensitising them regarding the importance of waste minimisation, resource recovery and source segregation are the substantial initiatives which the municipal authorities and NGOs should undertake for an overhauling of the existing systems. It is rightly believed that “knowledge is power but knowledge without action is useless”. Multiple organisations and resident groups have been making an invaluable social contribution by running workshops and spreading awareness on the necessity of proper waste disposal.
However given the magnitude of the menace, without a change in mindsets any palpable change in waste management practices remains a remote possibility. Unless the Government and the residents of the city work unanimously towards universalising ethical waste handling practices, even the existing mechanisms cannot be utilised efficiently.
(The author is a retired civil servant)