By H H Mohrmen
The Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation of the Ministry of Jal Shakti Swachhata Hi Seva (SHS) campaign is being celebrated from September 15 to October 2. The theme of SHS is “garbage-free India.” One of the topics for discussion in the observation of Swachhata Hi Seva is “a small step” by every citizen will make the dream of a garbage-free India a reality. The implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission has no doubt caught the attention of the masses in the country, but the question is whether the Mission has achieved the goal it had hoped for.
The Prime Minister of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2nd October 2014 to accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to put the focus on sanitation, in the whole country. The government has left no stone unturned to bring the much-needed change to make the villages across the country clean.
Under the mission, all villages, Gram Panchayats, Districts, States and Union Territories in India declared themselves “open-defecation free” (ODF) by 2 October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The expectation is that by constructing over 100 million toilets in rural and urban India, the country will be able to make all the towns and villages in the country, open defecation free. The question remains if by merely constructing toilets we have achieved the ODF goal.
Constructing
toilet vis-à-vis ODF
The government may have achieved its goal of constructing millions of toilets in all the villages in the country, but are all villages ODF in the real sense of the term? The challenge of having enough water supplies to use in the bathroom, especially during the lean season was found to be a stumbling block to people making hundred percent use of the toilets in the villages. Before the end of 2018, one saw that signboards act like visibility points to show that each village in the country is clean or has attained ODF status. The issue of toilets was one of the campaign points of the BJP in the last election, but it would be interesting to visit these villages and see how many of these toilets are put to use. What percentage of the community uses the toilets provided to them?
In Meghlaya at least one biggest open defecation area that still exists in the state is under the Amlarem subdivision. The area where the open defecation still happens is the stretch of road from the upper Nongtalang area to Dawki where trucks carrying limestone and boulders line up to proceed to the Bangladesh border. Hundreds if not thousands of trucks queue for their turn to unload the cargo to Bangladesh and during weekends these trucks have to stay on the road for hours together and with no place to ease themselves. Where else would they go for their natural call, but nature? Neither the government, the Export groups, nor the limestone producers have made the effort to construct toilets for the drivers and their assistants to ease themselves.
ODF and the Roads
and Highways
The other places where one witnesses people engaging in open defecation are the roads in the state and even the highways. Indeed, all petrol pumps or petrol stations are supposed to have good toilets with running water, but the oil companies need to do a proper audit to see if these toilets at the different petrol pumps serve their purposes. Neither has the government provided public toilets for travelers on any of the roads or highways, hence travelers are compelled to openly defecate on backwoods near the roadside.
To ensure that open defecation-free behaviours are sustained, and no one is left behind, the government is launching a new phase of SBM. The mission also aspires to find ways and means on making solid and liquid waste management facilities accessible to the general public in the entire country. The Mission is moving towards the next Phase II of SBMG i.e. ODF-Plus. ODF Plus activities under Phase II of Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) which will reinforce ODF behaviours and more importantly focus on providing interventions for the safe management of solid and liquid waste in villages.
Solid and Liquid Waste management
Waste is going to be or already is the major problem in both the urban and rural areas the world over. Waste is not only a menace that governments in the entire world have encountered, but the much more serious problem is, that it looks like the world does not seem to have a solution to the problem till date. The challenge of managing solid waste is not only a problem in the town but now in the villages too. If we are yet to have a solution for managing solid waste, managing liquid waste will be a herculean task for the hill regions in particular.
Mawlynnong and
Shangpung story
During the recording of the program for Akashwani (All India Radio) on the SBM week, a member of the panelist Sajeki Passah who is also the Editor of the popular Pnar Webzine or online news outlet Wyrta shared about an incident he encountered at Shangpung village. Shangpung was selected as a model village and one of the achievements was to maintain cleanliness in the village. He was covering a program in the village and unconsciously dropped a betel nut or pan leaf pouch and to his embarrassment a young girl near him picked the wrapper. Villages like Mawlynnong, Shangpung, and many other villages have indeed been successful in making their village clean, but the million-dollar question is how they dispose of their waste. One wonders how even a village like Mawlynnong disposes its waste because making one’s village clean is one thing but managing or disposing of the waste generated is another question.
The tradition of managing bio-degradable by converting it to animal feed or compost is still being practiced today and this is fine because in the past the waste people generated was not as complex as it is now. But the question is what they do with non-biodegradable waste as burning waste is illegal?
Loss of opportunity to dispose of plastic waste
Plastic waste including chip packets, biscuit, sweet pouch, and other packets are the most common wastes that one can see in the town and even in the villages. Plastic waste are common eyesore both in the town and the villages and this plastic waste is often the culprit that chokes the drains in the human settlements. There is an alternative on how to dispose of plastic waste but the opportunity was not used by the government, the public, and even the industries.
As per Waste Management Rules 2016, the plastics can be used as Refuse-derived fuel (RDF) by the industries and in the case of Meghalaya the cement plants in particular. The truth is the cement plants are not taking the plastic waste as RDF seriously. The cement companies too should understand that it is their moral obligation to work with the community and use the plastics waste as RDF.
The goal is zero
waste to landfill
What do we do with our waste? In many cases, members of the public or even the administrators still look at landfills as the end of the last destination of the waste we generate. Even though the government has introduced the concept of a waste recovery centre (WRC) in the state, the project is not as popular as it should be. WRC is planning to be a centre at the local level, but the project does not find many takers now. The objective is to segregate waste at the source and the waste generated is then recovered and made or converted to resources.
My waste my
responsibility
At the radio discussion, Sajeki Passah suggested that in the villages the service of the Self Help Groups (SHGs) which are very active in the villages and the village organizations (VOs) can be used. They can be trained in waste segregation and making compost from biodegradable waste with some support from MSRLS.
Behavioral change is
the need of the hour
The lasting solution to managing waste in both the urban a rural areas is behavioural change.