Mr Modi, how about including garbage in your sanitation deadline?

India is the sixth largest garbage generating  country, but has made provision to treat only 12.5 per cent of it

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set for India an ambitious and noteworthy goal: elimination of open defecation by 2019. But it is not just open defecation that is a menace; municipal garbage is an equally big problem, Mr.Modi.

According to a latest World Bank report (2012), India generates about 109,589 tonnes of municipal solid waste a day, making it the sixth largest municipal solid waste generating country of the world (see graph). However, the country has provisions to treat only 12.5 per cent of the generated waste.

Not much was thought about waste in the country till the public interest petition of Almitra H Patel and others was filed in the Supreme Court in 1996. It alleged failure of government authorities to discharge their obligatory duty to manage municipal solid waste.

A consequence of the case is the present legislation on solid waste management in the country—the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules of 2000, notified by the Union ministry of environment and forests in September 2000.

A decade has passed since the notification, but not much has happened on ground. We still have still not finalised the technology of treatment. Debates about the technology which needs to be adopted to treat the municipal solid waste—composting, biogas generation or thermal treatment—are still on. Thermal technology–waste to energy treatment plants—are facing huge resistance.