The Swachch Bharat (Clean India) campaign on Thursday got off to an energetic start. But a glance at the jaw-dropping dimensions of the problem makes one conjecture whether PM Modi in actual fact has a chance to meet his target to clean up India by 2019?
Every year, urban India generates about 47 million tons of solid waste (garbage) or about 1.3 lakh tons every day , according to a study by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). And this stats is only in cities and towns with a municipal body reporting.
If you add their garbage of another 30% of urban India who lives outside these cities, the total would amount to about 68 million tons.
The garbage generated till 2011 would cover 2,20,000 football fields piled 9 meters (27 feet) high with garbage, according to a calculation done by TERI in 1998.
Since half of Indian garbage is typically organic matter which is compostable, the dumped garbage rots, gets blown around and in the end decomposes and mix up with the ground. The left behind untreatable part – mostly plastics – can be seen flying near here.
The other dimension of sanitation is wastewater or sewage disposal. As per CPCB estimation, in 2009, 38 billion liters of sewage was generated per day from 498 tier I cities. Installed capacity to treat this giant river of wastewater is 12 billion litres or less than one-third of the requirement.
This means the remaining 26 billion liters is getting dumped into our rivers and streams daily, making many of them terminally ill.
Only 51% of Indians live in houses with drains which means 49% of Indians has no drains in their houses while another 33% live in houses with open drains.
This is the single biggest source of filth and the primary source of several diseases, apart from garbage.