FPJ Analysis: Waste Management

It is an accolade that few cities and even fewer temple towns manage to get, but Tirupati did. The Municipal Corporation of Tirupati came in for high praise for its solid waste management from the 16th Finance Commission of the Government of India two days back. A delegation of the Commission visited the Thukivakam plant and learnt of the innovative and productive ways in which the temple town segregates and disposes of solid, wet and construction waste. This is worth taking note of because temple towns are legendary not only for the presiding deity and devotees who flock to them but also for the lack of hygiene, negligible waste management, garbage strewn around, and the polluting and health impact of it all.

Tirupati, or specifically the Sri Venkateswara Temple, attracts an estimated 24 million visitors every year, which means anywhere between 60,000 and a lakh every day. The wet waste generated is equally staggering, approximately 115 tonnes of waste per day, which is roughly 41,925 tonnes per year. Besides this, there is food debris, dry waste and recyclables, plastic disposals, and construction and demolition waste, which together make another 100 tonnes. Tirupati has been in the top 10 spots of the Swachh Sarvekshan ratings of India’s cities with a lakh population and has received a 5-star Garbage Free City (GFC) and Water Plus rating.

It must be doing something right, and that has to do with the entire chain of segregation, collection, processing and disposal. Door-to-door waste collection, auto tippers equipped with blue, green, and red compartments for segregating plastic and non-plastic waste, identifying bulk generators, installing six decentralised waste processing plants, material recovery, and the employment of nearly 1,000 sanitation workers all play their part in ensuring the solid waste management of the town. There’s a lesson in this for other towns, even large cities like Delhi and Mumbai, where thousands of tonnes of waste is generated every day.

With the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) pegging solid waste in Mumbai and Delhi at about 11,000 and 8,700 tonnes per day, respectively, the two cities equal the total waste generated in the next eight on the list. Yet, typically, even as other aspects of urban infrastructure, services and governance receive attention and dedicated resources, waste management hardly ever makes it to spiffy seminar rooms, international conferences, social media memes, and think tank papers. A reason may be the deeply embedded cultural attitude to shun waste, even thoughts and talk about it. Another may be that waste management is far from being the impressive spectacle that politicians in power now seek. The Swachh Bharat Mission sought to focus attention on this neglected aspect of India’s life but became highly reductive and farcical. Reliance on landfills and perfunctory efforts at segregation are no longer enough. Towns and cities across India may want to borrow a leaf out of Tirupati’s manual.