Waste Management in rural areas !

Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat
Recently Rural Development Minister Abdul Haq Khan along with his staff had gone to Chennai to study the Solid Waste Management programme being implemented in rural areas of Tamil Nadu. Daily Excelsior had carried a detailed news article on this issue on March 10th 2017. During his meeting with Tamil Nadu’s Rural Development Minister S P Velumani, Abdul Haq Khan was informed about different Rural Development schemes being implemented in Tamil Nadu. J&K’s RDD Minister was informed that Govt of Tamil Nadu managed to implement several projects of Solid Liquid waste Management through MGNREGA which are conventional way of disposing garbage and very economical, effective and eco-friendly. The Minister was taken on a tour to few villages where such waste management projects were being implemented.  I have been voicing for the same issue  from last few years.  On 28th March 2016 I had written a piece in Daily Excelsior titled “Waste Management in Rural areas”. For those readers who are interested to go through that piece I am copying the link here  http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/solid-waste-management-in-rural-areas/.
Last year in the month of March i had visited a remote village called Lassipora Watrehail in central Kashmir’s Budgam district  . I found lot of garbage scattered in the village. I asked some youth “why don’t you clean your village ? ” . ” In cities and towns Municipalities do all this work and they lift all garbage from different localities. If Municipal officials and Urban civic bodies are trained , they can do door to door collection of solid and wet waste also , but how can we manage all this in villages as there is no such authority / manpower  available ” said one of the local youth. My answer to them was funds provided under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGS) or NREGA could  be utilized for this kind of work.  During that time I was not fully aware about Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin (SBM-Gramin) which also has an exclusive financial component for village  sanitation.
Dovetailing NREGA & Solid Waste work ?
The basic idea of launching MG-NREGS was to create jobs within the village so that migration of people from rural to urban areas was stopped and poverty was eradicated. Another aspect of this scheme is to create sustainable assets for the village like  drains , retaining walls , small link roads. If some of the MG-NREGA funds  could  be  diverted towards solid waste management , aren’t we creating jobs for the local unemployed people ? Making village clean and garbage free and constructing compost pits , purchasing hand carts to carry garbage, making organic compost  etc , aren’t these assets going to be owned  by a village ? Lot of developmental work have been done in villages from last several years under NREGA , if we earmark some funds for sanitation & solid waste management also , what is wrong in it ? Heaps of garbage and wet waste is lying scattered in our villages , our water bodies have been chocked due to accumulation of polythene and there is no policy to manage it. We are all mute spectators as  we have no clear policy for solid waste management in rural areas .  It would be wise enough to manage it through NREGA and other similar funds.
SBM Gramin :
Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) has two programmes :
* SBM Urban
* 2. SBM Rural or Gramin.
Under SBM Gramin there are further two components :
A. Individual House Hold Lavatories (IHHL)
B. Solid Liquid Waste Management (SLWM).
Under IHHL lavatories are being constructed in villages from last few years to make villages Open Defecation Free (ODF) , but as for as Solid Liquid Waste Management (SLWM) is concerned, no steps have been  taken in this direction. From last more than 2 years funds under SLWM have not being utilized in Jammu & Kashmir. Now from last few months we have been able to sensitize Government especially Chief Minister, Rural Development Minister and Secretary Rural Development and we have been assured that some work in this direction would be taken up soon.
Conclusion :
The garbage  generated in rural areas of India is increasingly becoming a matter of serious concern.  Although the  solid waste generated in rural areas is predominantly organic and biodegradable in nature , it is becoming a major problem as the waste generated is not segregated at the source  and is of the order of 0.3 to 0.4 million metric tons per day, as reported by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation Government of India. Inconsiderate littering causes poor environmental sanitation resulting in unhealthy quality of living. Therefore, domestic-refuse should be handled responsibly. In order to manage waste in a desirable way, there should be a functional waste management system in place. Without a functional waste collection and disposal system at the Gram Panchayat level it is arbitrary to hold individual households responsible, or blame them of irresponsibility. Various schemes of Government of India if implemented properly can make our villages clean and green. Fund availability is not at all a problem . The only problem which I have understood is lack of information and communication. From last six months I had lot of interaction with officials of Rural Development department vis a vis Waste Management in Rural areas, except one Block Development Officer (BDO) , out of 20 BDO’s I met was aware about Solid Liquid Waste Management (SLWM) under SBM Gramin. Even if some officials are willing to work in this regard  , the system is so much centralized that nobody is able to take decision at his / her  own level.  Tamil Nadu has developed hundreds of compost unit across 2000 villages of the state. Why cannot J&K also create one or two such manual compost units in every village where organic waste can be treated and converted into bio fertilizer (compost) ?
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