Rural waste management in India remains under-examined despite growing environmental and public health risks
Evidence from Murud taluka shows how political will, community participation and financing determine success
Lessons for designing waste systems that can endure beyond pilot projects
Several public health and safety concerns in India today are tied to an uneven and improper waste management system. Stray dogs become territorial around open garbage dumps; rising air pollution can be traced to the routine burning of waste; and unregulated wet waste and contaminated water create breeding grounds for seasonal diseases such as chikungunya and dengue.
While central rules and legislation outline the structure of solid waste management (SWM) across the country, states retain the prerogative to design systems suited to local contexts. Public discussions about waste in India continue to focus largely on cities. Rural waste, though no less urgent, receives far less attention.
The combined impact of increased tourism and the absence of functional waste management systems has inundated pristine natural environments with undisposed waste in many rural areas. Over the course of a year, we observed how solid waste management unfolds in a rural taluka in coastal Maharashtra.
Field observations reveal how deeply waste management depends on local social, political and geographic conditions. Ignoring these differences is one reason waste management remains persistently difficult across India, even as it features prominently in development agendas and government programmes.
Driving down the Raigad coastline from Mandwa jetty, as you approach the region’s first and only white-sand beach, the bright blue sea comes into view through a line of neatly arranged shacks. Polyester shorts and T-shirts hang out front, surrounded by brightly coloured plastic toys, stacks of packaged drinking water and flavoured soda bottles, coconut and corn vendors, and frying pans serving vada pav and instant noodles. But once you pass the shacks and the stretch of white sand, turn your gaze the other way. Look carefully between the thickets and you will see piles of discarded plastic — hurriedly pushed out of sight before Friday morning brings in the weekend tourists.
This is Kashid Beach, located in Murud taluka of Raigad district. Every weekend, around 1,000-1,500 tourists arrive here from Mumbai and nearby areas, generating enormous quantities of waste for surrounding villages to manage. Also based in this taluka is Aamhi Swachh Charitable Foundation (Aamhi), which began beach clean-up work in early 2022 and has since expanded across the taluka to organise SWM systems in partnership with local Gram Panchayats.
Over twelve months, we observed the everyday challenges of running SWM in rural Maharashtra — ranging from resistance to initiatives led by perceived “outsiders” to the reluctance of local authorities to strictly enforce waste management rules.
In Murud taluka, organised waste management has only recently begun in some villages, through a mix of incentives under the Swachh Bharat Mission and advocacy by Aamhi. Here, waste management is often understood simply as the ghantagaadi — the waste collection truck with a “bell“ introduced under the Mission. Uncertain about how to plan SWM operations, some Gram Panchayats never used these vehicles. Others, led by proactive Sarpanchs, used them to collect mixed waste from homes, hotels and shops.
Tourism compounds the pressure created by local waste generation. In villages such as Nandgaon, Kashid, Murud and Danda — crowded with guesthouses and eateries packed into nearly every available space — plastic, both high- and low-value, dominates the dry waste stream. Aamhi’s records from 25 villages show that waste also includes around 10 per cent fabric waste, 15 per cent cement bags (raffia), and 10 per cent glass, which together form the second-largest waste category.
Before Aamhi’s involvement, Panchayats often instructed ghantagaadi drivers to dump collected waste near the seashore, slowly turning these areas into informal dumping grounds. While valuable materials such as cardboard, metal and plastic PET bottles are picked up by scrap dealers, low-value plastics — particularly multilayered plastics and cement bags — are left behind in landfills. In February 2024, one such dumping site in Kashid caught fire and took nearly two weeks to extinguish.
It was amid this growing crisis that Aamhi began its work — first in Nandgaon and then across 25 villages in Murud taluka. Progress, however, has been uneven. Fieldwork made clear that successful waste management depends on local participation, political backing, decentralised planning and steady funding — conditions that are often absent at the village level.
For many residents in Murud taluka, waste is viewed as dirty and worthless — something to be moved out of sight. This leads to routine burning of low-value plastics or sweeping waste into nearby open areas. Households with gardens often compost wet waste, but many others admitted that, before ghantagaadi collection began, they disposed of wet waste in the sea.
In Nandgaon, villagers initially welcomed the arrival of the ghantagaadi. Resistance emerged later, when waste segregation became mandatory and processing was handled by Aamhi. Residents felt that control had shifted from an elected local body to an external organisation. At a Gram Sabha meeting in January 2025, one resident summed up the sentiment bluntly, “If people from Mumbai have come here to manage waste, they must be making money from it. Why should we spend our time segregating waste? We have enough problems already.”
Murud’s coastal villages also experience significant outmigration for work, primarily to Mumbai. Those who remain are engaged in fishing, farming or tourism-related jobs. For households juggling livelihoods, waste segregation feels like an additional burden. Resistance is strengthened by the perception that waste management is being imposed by a non-local organisation.
A similar lack of responsibility is visible among second-home owners — affluent residents who spend weekends or extended periods in their holiday homes. Many manage waste privately through burning or composting and opt out of village-level systems, much like tourists.
Without local cooperation, SWM cannot function. Recognising this, Aamhi has built its team entirely from local residents — from supervisors to safai saathis (cleanliness helpers) — framing waste management as a source of livelihood. Alongside daily operations, the organisation runs school programmes, distributes waste bags, attends Gram Sabha meetings and participates in village events to gradually build a sense of shared responsibility.
Local leadership makes a decisive difference. What began as small community clean-ups in 2022 has evolved into a partnership between Aamhi, Gram Panchayats and the Raigad Zilla Parishad. Cooperation is not always easy, but the demands of waste management leave little alternative.
In Nandgaon, early beach clean-ups led by Aamhi’s co-founder and local women caught the attention of the village Sarpanch, who wanted to try a different approach. Enforcing segregation, however, proved difficult when residents — also her voters — openly opposed it. While Aamhi’s programme continues in this village, it remains fragile without strict enforcement of waste rules.
In Kashid, waste management struggles for another reason: Opposition from beach stall owners. Their refusal to segregate waste continues largely unchecked due to inaction by the Gram Panchayat, caught between the local politics of a powerful scrap dealer and its own authority to implement the law.
Korlai, however, offers a contrasting example. Here, Sarpanch Rajashri Misal enforced waste rules firmly. Recognising the gendered dimensions of waste work, she prioritised the participation of women in the village. Soon after SWM operations began in August 2025, she announced fines for dumping or burning waste, alongside rewards for reporting violations.
“There will be a fine of Rs 1,000 for dumping or burning garbage. Rs 500 from this amount will be given as a reward to whoever reports such dumping or burning. A photo or video must be submitted as evidence,” Misal announced at a meeting with village women soon after operations began.
Within six months, nearly all households were consistently segregating waste. Whatever the political motivations behind such firmness, its impact on waste management was unmistakable.
Aamhi treats each village as a separate unit, adapting its approach to local conditions. This allows waste systems to be introduced gradually and modified as needed. In villages where mixed waste collection had been the norm, entrenched habits were difficult to change. In some cases, collections had to be paused or redesigned to encourage segregation first.
All dry waste is transported to a central facility for sorting and recycling, but wet waste must be managed locally. This has forced Panchayats to think seriously about composting infrastructure, something many continue to struggle to establish.
In villages where waste collection began with segregation mandated from the outset, compliance was smoother. While decentralised systems may be slower and more expensive initially, they tend to foster better accountability and participation over time. In Murud, such experimentation has been possible largely because Aamhi’s work is supported by external funding — bringing into focus another critical element of SWM: Steady financial support.
At the national level, waste management is funded under the Swachh Bharat Mission. In 2025, over Rs 7,000 crore was allocated to rural areas alone. Despite this, local bodies continue to struggle with costs and often outsource responsibilities to private contractors, who frequently seek to maximise profits by cutting expenses — most often at the expense of waste collectors, the lowest yet most essential rung of the system.
For Aamhi, waste management is also about creating stable livelihoods, particularly for local women. This is difficult to sustain when low-value plastics sell for as little as Rs 2-5 per kg, while collection costs are many times higher. As Rosalind Pereira, Aamhi’s co-founder, explains, “With collection costs close to Rs 40 per kg, the rates at which companies buy plastic packaging simply cannot cover the salaries of waste collectors, let alone operational costs.”
Extended Producer Responsibility was intended to address this gap, by making corporations responsible for the environmental damage caused by their products and packaging. In practice, however, companies set prices that rarely reflect real collection costs. A 2023 study shows that the rates at which corporations buy plastic waste remain abysmally low and require revision to account for geography, labour costs and on-ground realities.
A 2024 report by Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment found that even the updated Environmental Compensation framework — despite mandating price revisions every six months — is based on assumptions misaligned with India’s waste collection realities. Until recycling economics reflect distance, labour and infrastructure constraints, financial gaps will persist.
India’s waste crisis cannot be solved through one-size-fits-all solutions. As this case demonstrates, sustainable waste management depends on local politics, community participation and systems designed for specific places. Efficiency emerges from these interconnections. What is needed are waste systems that endure — shaped by local conditions, backed by strong leadership and shared by everyone who produces waste.
The authors would like to thank Khyati Tiwari for her research assistance during the fieldwork for this piece.
Kalindi Kokal is a senior research analyst at the Kotak School of Sustainability at IIT Kanpur and Anindita Chakrabarti, professor of sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and adjunct faculty at Kotak School of Sustainability, IIT Kanpur. Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth