Garbage a ticking time bomb in India, will have ‘disastrous consequences’ if not checked

Jan 27, 2019
Jaipur:  The boom that followed India’s economic liberalisation in the 1990s led to an “exponential increase” in the accumulation of garbage while also changing  the very nature’ of litter generated. This “storm of waste” is a ticking time bomb and could have disastrous, fatal and horrifying consequences if not checked, say Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron, who have co-authored the monumental “Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India”.

Doron, an Associate Professor of Anthropology and South Asia Studies at the Australian National University, once went to Seelampur on the outskirts of Delhi and was “horrified” to see the manner in which old mobile phones — e-waste — were being treated.

He immediately and approached Jeffrey, a visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies in Singapore, saying: “This is huge, we need to study garbage in India,” thus beginning the research for the book.

“Since India’s boom in the 1990s and the aftermath of its economic liberalisation, the volume of waste has increased exponentially and the nature of waste has changed too. This boom has also produced construction and demolition waste, the hazardous waste and the plastic and the fast-moving consumer waste,” Doron told IANS on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

India, for example, had a culture of using biodegradable plates instead of plastic plates that you see all around today, he said.

“All of these together make an almost perfect storm of waste which is very difficult to tackle unless you do it at different levels of governance,” he added.

His co-author Jeffrey, on the other hand, said that there is some value in the waste and the people who work in the landfills extract that value.

“While you got to extract that value out of the garbage, it must must follow a certain procedure,” Jeffrey told IANS.

He said this complexity applies to all kinds of waste. “You have to find out who is throwing it, why is he throwing it, is there a need to throw it, who is the first person to handle it and then where can it go to have a new life.”

“The pharmaceutical industry is centred now in India because certain ventures are not profitable anymore in the West. These multinationals have outsourced their companies to India, particularly Hyderabad, which has emerged as the pharmaceutical capital of India. A lot of what they discharge into the waterbodies and in the soil are active ingredients. They are creating a bacteria-resistant environment, what is also known as superbugs.

“It’s disseminating and killing the fields, its harming the livelihood of the people who live in the periphery of these companies. It’s creating new bugs that even the most powerful antibiotics cannot tackle. So you have a situation where effluents produced as a result of bringing new industries in india, or creating special economic zones, is actually harming India in the long run. There has to be better planning and corrective measure need to be applied,” anthropologist Doron said.

Jeffrey said that life expectancy for those working and living around landfills in India is just 39 years as respiratory diseases and infections are common among them.

They suggested empowering of local urban bodies and municipalities to deal with the crisis.

“At the moment they have the responsibility but they do not have the wherewithal, not do they have enough trained staff,” said Jeffrey, while Doron added that local governments need to partner with civil society and the people who are already on the ground dealing with waste. They need to be made aware of the serious health implications, and “trained in extracting value from waste without hampering the environment or causing serious health implications” to themselves or those around them.

IANS

Study decodes how land conditions impact summer monsoons in Asia

Tokyo: A team of Japanese researchers have identified how conditions on land will impact weather during summer monsoons in Asia. Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University used numerical simulations to analyse...

Deficit snowfall poses growing risk of glacial lake outburst in Himalayas, warn glaciologists

Shimla: The reduced snowfall in the Himalayas increases glacial lakes that pose a growing risk of lake outburst floods in the Himalayas, warn glaciologists. They call for increasing preparedness, international...

Summer-like temperatures felt across Japan

Tokyo: Warm air flowing from the south drove temperatures higher in Japan's Pacific Ocean coast regions on Tuesday, with record-high temperatures recorded at many locations, the weather agency said. By...

TN govt announce chemical free programme to improve soil quality

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister M.R.K. Panneerselvam on Tuesday announced a chemical free programme to improve soil quality called -- Chief Minister’s Mannuyir Kaathu Mannuyir Kaappom Scheme...

5.5 tons of radioactive water leaked from Fukushima nuclear plant

Tokyo: Approximately 5.5 tons of water containing radioactive materials have leaked from equipment at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, local media reported. Workers discovered water leaking from the outlet...

‘Severe’ air quality chokes Delhi most of the days in January

New Delhi: Throughout January, Delhi grappled with persistent air pollution, exacerbating a crisis that had already been worsening since the previous year. Unfavourable weather conditions, including fog, calm winds, and...

Delhi’s bad AQI in January raises concerns, experts flag temperature inversion & urban factors

New Delhi: The days when "parali" (stubble) burning in neighbouring states of Haryana and Punjab was solely blamed for rising pollution levels in Delhi from October to the first week...

NGT seeks report on encroachments of waterbodies, wetlands in TN

Chennai: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has sought a report from the Tamil Nadu chief secretary on district-wise encroachments on waterbodies, wetlands and river poramboke land. Following news paper reports...

Higher reaches receive light snowfall in J&K

Srinagar: Night temperature rose across J&K on Friday as higher reaches received light snowfall. Higher reaches like Gulmarg, Sonamarg, Zojila Pass, Pir Ki Gali on Mughal road, Sinthan Pass, etc.,...

Delhi turns into ‘gas chamber’, air quality in ‘severe’ category

New Delhi: There seems to be no relief from deteriorating air quality despite the Commission for Air Quality Management’s (CAQM) Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) stage-II in force as the...

Namibian cheetah ‘Jwala’ gives birth to three cubs in Kuno

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park (KNP) got three new guests as Namibian cheetah 'Jwala' gave birth to three cubs. Union Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav shared this information on his...

IMD issues ‘red alert’; fog and cold day conditions likely to continue in North India

New Delhi: Seeing no relief in the ongoing weather pattern, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a red alert on Sunday, indicating that dense to very dense fog and cold...

Read Previous

Cyber attacks outpacing physical terror attacks

Read Next

Facebook denies claims that half of its accounts are fake

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com