Bangladeshi Immigrants and Swachchh Bharat

A few days ago we had a meeting of the local Residents' Welfare Association.  One member observed that an order has been promulgated by the government for penalizing burning of garbage as a mode of disposal.  Of course, nobody knew of any initiatives for improvements in the current pathetic state of garbage collection and disposal to supplement this notification.  In the absence of such improvements, the notification looks like just cynical buck passing.

At our place garbage is not collected by the corporation directly but by a private agency called "Chamacham Lucknow."  I think most other cities too have similar arrangements.  Chamacham fellows are supposed to take all the garbage to the nearest designated garbage dump from where corporation collects it, though not on a daily basis. The Chamacham people do take the household garbage away once in two days.  However, the fallen leaves, plant trimmings from houses as also the neighborhood park are bulky and Chamacham workers refuse to cart it away.  Instead they collect it in a heap, leave it to dry and then set fire to it.  Often this burning mass also includes bits of plastic and wrappings lying on the road and roadside. This is a major source of air pollution in the city.

As an aside, we all have read in the newspapers that these days the farmers too set fire to the dry plant stalk remaining in the fields after harvesting. Thus burning of plant stalks in villages and garbage in cities have raised air pollution levels to a new high all around.

After the meeting I chanced to meet the local Chamacham supervisor and interviewed him briefly.  This is the picture that emerged from the interview.

He said that there are well paid municipal employees under a supervisor who are supposed to sweep the streets and take away all the swept-up garbage.  Instead they are made to work as domestic servants at bureaucrats' and politicians' homes.  Then many of them do not work themselves.  They hire another person to whom they pay a fraction of their wages.  They also pay another small fraction to their supervisor and then splurge the rest.  After all, why should they work once they have become a government employee: never mind if it is just the LSG (Local Self Government!)  Chamacham people rightly thinks that compensating for such shirking by people who are extremely well paid entitles them to separate payment for sweeping the streets.

Then again, the number of garbage dumpsters has been steadily declining as nobody wants one near his house.  To be sure, it really is a big nuisance.  It will overflow before it is emptied by the autonomous employees.  Dogs and cows will be rummaging through the overflow and adding their own poop to it.  Now who wouldn't mobilize all his resources to ensure that he is as far away from such a place as possible?

Thus inadequate deployment of dumpsters and infrequent emptying of these few dumpsters force burning of garbage as the only means of disposal.

He concluded by adding a note of caution, "People resent the Bangladeshi immigrants. But it must be said that but for them our cities would have by now turned into garbage mountains."

Unless Municipal Corporations are overhauled, rid of corruption and their employees made to work, merely exhorting and goading the citizens will not get us any closer to the Swachchh Bharat of our dreams.  And if we cannot make the employees work, we may have to encourage Bangladeshi immigration, political posturing notwithstanding.