Managing waste next big mission under upgraded Swachh Bharat
NEW TARGET Under Open Defecation Free (ODF) plus, several states have set themselves the ambitious goal of achieving total sanitation along with solid and liquid waste management
schemes to achieve these targets. The basic idea is to provide facilities that would ensure minimum hygiene and, in turn, reduce the disease burden.
A community-based programme, ODF plus provides ODF villages and small towns the opportunity to generate compost fertilizer and bio-gas from waste, thereby creating an alternate revenue-generation avenue.
“The real work is to be done by the locals themselves under guidance from the village panchayat or municipal officers,” said an official associated with the Swachh Bharat Mission.
In Haryana, about 1,360 projects have been sanctioned for scientifically treating solid waste. Rajendra Mehta, coordinator for Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin), Haryana, said every village selected would have a shed to process household waste and two-three villagers would be tasked with handling and processing garbage.
In addition, the Haryana government will fund villages under the GOBAR Dhan (Galvanising Organic Bio Agro Resources Dhan) scheme to convert animal waste into compost or bio-gas.
With the state having 450 cow shelters and about 3.41 lakh cows, the scheme would help generate revenue, a state government official familiar with the matter said.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, while launching the ODF plus scheme in several villages in August, set a tall target.
“My ultimate dream is to make Andhra Pradesh totally sanitised, healthy and liveable by deriving public health and environmental outcomes for all citizens,” he said.
Under the ODF plus programme, the Andhra Pradesh government is looking at ensuring a monthly income of ~ 10,000 for each rural household, supply of piped gram panchayats had achieved five to six star rating on a 10-star scale.
But CL Venkat Rao, executive vicechairman of Swachh Andhra Corporation, pointed out that some panchayats in water-starved Rayalaseema and Uttarandhra regions “had got poor ratings in the absence of uniform distribution of water”. Efforts are underway to ensure that all panchayats get a higher rating in the coming months, he added.
However, it is Himachal Pradesh’s Sundernagar town in Mandi district, about 100 km from Shimla, that a people movement’s has begun to win for it the tag of the country’s first ODF plus town. Ashok Kumar, chief executive of the town municipal committee, said the process of geo-tagging community and public toilets had begun and work would soon start on waste water and solid waste management. “Along with farm councillors, we are going from door to door to raise awareness about the harms of defecating in the open, the importance of cleanliness and waste segregation,” he said, adding that rag-pickers trained in waste segregation had been engaged.
“Underground dustbins have been installed at 40 locations in the town and a disposal plant for biodegradable waste has been built,” he added.
In Rajasthan, a smart village scheme for rural habitats having a population of more than 3,000 has been started. State government officials said 5,000 sanitary complexes and solid and liquor waste management projects have been approved so far. “Money has been given for these projects and work will start soon,” said a Rajasthan government official. With the ODF plus programme promising to change the landscape of villages and smaller towns, many states are showing interest in it.
“We are receiving several proposals from state governments to move towards ODF plus,” a central government official said, claiming it shows the “huge” potential of the programme.