The Gargantuan Garbage Mess

Jairam, and his wife routinely pick garbage from households from many housing societies in Sector 62 of Noida, billed as the most happening part of the satellite city of national capital, because of numerous educational institutions, thriving tech companies and more than three dozen housing societies. Its past noon, his cart full of garbage collected, he moves to a slightly isolated part of road a couple of hundred meters away from local shopping plaza, and empties his cart. Ask him if he realizes the implication of what he does, he nods in affirmation, knowing fully well that garbage littered just meters away from where people live, spews foul smell and breeds mosquitoes. But he says he just does not have any other place where he can throw garbage. The municipality has virtually non-existent system of waste collection and management, the result of which is that the largest vacant area of the sector, supposed to be developed as a park, has become the de facto garbage dump. There are half a dozen other spots where Jairam and his likes dump garbage.

- Anand Mishra

Change the name of garbage collector, name of locality, or city, or town, or municipality, story remains same. Couple of years after Swachh Bharat was launched with much fanfare, and hope, to clean India of its garbage mess, things have only deteriorated with nearly every large city, and even Tier II and Tier III cities grappling with the question of how to manage its waste. As urbanization gathers pace and lifestyles change even in rural areas and more and more non bio degradable materials like plastics and e-waste is being thrown out by households, urban planners and municipalities are proving just incapable to deal with the challenge, most not even aware of the scale of the problem. Resultantly, our exploding cities are sitting on a possible health calamity of unimaginable proportion. Only recently, the Supreme Court accepted a PIL on the piling up of garbage in Delhi and the breeding of mosquitoes due to filth.