My City My Responsibility - Waste Management Miracle

Dear All, 

Pune is one of the SMART cities and is still facing the challenges of managing waste in the city. I think its time we start taking management lessons from sustainable initiatives undertaken by small towns in making waste management a miracle. One such story is about a small town named Vengurla around 400 km from Pune under the leadership of Mr. Ramdas Kokare. 

Mr.Ramdas Kokare

Mr. Ramdas Kokare the former Chief Municipal Officer of Vengurla (now posted at Karjat) believes that apart from waste segregation at source, public participation is equally important for the city to be clean. Vengurla is a small town having around 12,400 people and generating almost 7 tonnes of wastes daily. 100% of the wastes is segregated into three different categories at the source like the wet, dry and hazardous. The wet waste is used for biogas generation producing electricity that powers machines used in the waste management facility. The dry waste is further segregated into 19 different types based on its reuse. All the nonrecyclable plastic is shredded, mixed with bitumen and used in road building making the roads more stronger. It was Mr. Kokare who implemented this in the town and transformed the waste landfill into waste management park. His management strategy simply involved taking rounds around the city just before coming to the office and while returning home, in order to see if the city is clean. He also motivated his subordinates to do the same! He and his subordinates personally talked with a certain number of people daily to educate them about the importance of waste segregation.  

Pune being an urban area having educated and active citizens is still struggling with segregation of wastes at the source into just wet and dry. Disposal of all the wastes is another issue completely. Our landfill sites are overused and people staying around the sites have to cope up with the nuisance. I cannot understand where does the problem lie? Are we not taking the Swach Bharat mission seriously? 

Mixed waste segregation

But then I feel people's participation is missing? Can the responsible citizens among us take inspiration from Mr. Kokare? Can we  educate each other about the importance of cleanliness in our surroundings in order to ensure a disease free locality? Can we advocate for segregation if we see someone not segregating the waste? Can we cooperate or coordinate with our local officers to ensure that our areas are clean? Can we ensure segregation of wastes into wet and dry and keep our sanitary wastes separately to ensure the hygiene of the waste collectors and processors?Segregation is a crucial first step. As Mr. Kokare says, mixed waste is a nuisance but segregated waste is a wealth. 

Pournima Agarkar.

MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: Can higher GDP be the ultimate goal of 'development'?

Everywhere I turn, nowadays I hear about the need to increase GDP, or rate of growth of GDP. Should GDP - Gross Domestic Product - be the ultimate goal of development?


What is GDP, by the way??

The monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country borders in a specific time period is defined as Gross Domestic Product or GDP. Typically, it is calculated on an annual basis. It is important to understand the tacit assumption here - that all goods and services being produced and transacted are being recorded! Can you truly say that is the case in India? 

Picture this - I grow some vegetables in my garden, and sell them to my neighbours. Or I use some discarded CDs to make a solar cooker and sell it. (How to make a solar cooker using discarded CDs? Google might know, if you don't!) How are such transactions getting captured in the GDP calculation? And what about all the 'black money'? 

So, ok, possibly GDP is an UNDER-estimate of the wealth being generated in the country. But that is actually good, right? Whatever is our calculated GDP growth rate, we must be actually doing better than that! So we are prospering more than whatever we are measuring! That is cause for celebration, isn't it?

Indeed, that would not be a problem, if someone can show me the correlation between this abstract number and the quality of life of the entire population. I mean think about it. Today we have some 270 million people living under poverty line. At the same time we have some 400 thousand millionaires. If these millionaires became billionaires, I am sure the GDP will show a hike. But how much of this wealth is going to trickle down to the the 270 million BPL? 

The GDP as a stand alone number cannot represent 'development'. It has to be accompanied by another number, which also shows how much economic inequality still exists in the country. True development will happen if this second number goes down while the GDP goes up. 

Is there any such indicator? Of course, there is, and it is called the Gini Coefficient. I bet not many of you ever heard about this one! It is one Ginny that most politicians across the world would never let out of the bottle! The GIni Coefficient varies between 0 (perfect equality) and 1 (total inequality). So what is the Gini Coefficient of India and how has it varied with time? 

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg/2000px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png

India's Gini coefficient seems have zigzagged a bit over time, but has remained above 0.3. The graph does look a bit complex with all the lines bunched together in the middle, but you can see where we stand with respect to other nations in the world. 

If you follow the line for India in this graph, you will find that since 1990, when our economy opened up, our Gini coefficient has steadily gone up towards 0.4! 

Surely, this must be a co-incidence? What do you think?

Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful

    Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com