By Prof. Dr. P. K. Jena :

“Sanitation is more important than independence”. This is what Mahatma Gandhi had said. We never took the advice of the father of our nation seriously. As a result, even after 67 years of independence we have not been able to achieve much in the direction of “Swachh Bharat”, the clean India.

Today, nearly 30 to 40% of our people do not get clean water for drinking throughout the year. Most of the rural households have no access to toilets forcing them to defecate in open field causing serious pollution to our water, land and air. The most sacred river Ganga is highly polluted, and the situation is same for all the rivers and wetlands of our country.

Most of our urban areas are very dirty with inadequate facilities for waste management. New Delhi, the capital of our country is the most polluted city. The wastes and effluents of our urban areas lead to premature death of millions of our people.

Needless to say, “Swachh Bharat” is a prerequisite for socio economic developments of our people. Since Independence through various developmental programmes, the living standard of the people in India has improved considerably compared to pre independence era. However, the development is   not in harmony with the environment and conservation of resources. Most of the developmental programmes are single dimensional and have many times missed to take care of the ecological friendly aspects of better living.

For example, the government has provided water for drinking and other domestic purposes without taking necessary measures to avoid its contamination with the wastes, modern cities have been developed with least concern about proper management of the solid wastes and effluents generated due to various human activities and mining of minerals are being done in an unscientific manner without protecting other valuable resources like water, forest and fertile soil in the region.

Further, mushroom growth of industries is taking place without caring for proper disposal or treatment of their solid wastes and effluents. As a result of such half hazard developmental activities, our land, water and air are getting polluted and inflicting a lot of miseries to our people. The adverse impact of such environment unfriendly development nullifies whatever benefits we derive from these and even worse. Our expectation to have better living standard for our people remains mostly unfulfilled.

India compared to many other developed countries in the world, possesses plethora of valuable natural resources including water, soil, minerals, forest and marine wealth as well as the man power. But, the fruits of the developmental projects being implemented in the country have not led to an improved ecological life style for our people. At the same time our resources are being harnessed unscientifically. The vast amount of solid wastes and effluents which are generated particularly due to industrialization and urbanization, are polluting our land, air and water bodies extensively causing untold miseries and fatal diseases.

In this modern world, science and technology have advanced considerably to provide ways and means for the human beings to utilize the natural resources in order to lead an eco-friendly life style. While developed countries like Japan, Canada, USA, Germany etc. are able to lead healthier life style, India even with rich natural resources is not able to lead such a comfortable living. In key areas like utilization of water for drinking and other domestic purposes, managing the industrial, agricultural and domestic wastes including human excreta, harnessing the renewable energy like solar, wind, bio energy, geothermal etc. through eco-friendly technology, the people of India can lead a healthy, long and happy life. In this task, the chemical science and technology which have been developed considerably in recent years, have a major role to play.

In order to build a “Swachh Bharat” the role of chemical science and technology is very important. By utilizing our knowledge in this area, we can maintain our rivers and other water bodies as well as the ground water free from pollutants and provide our people clean drinking water throughout the year. The major portion of the health budget of our country is spent on treating water borne diseases mainly diarrhea, cholera etc.

According to world health organization, failure to invest in water and sanitation, costs about 84 billion USA dollars per year to the developing world through loss of lives, low productivity of sick workers, increased health system cost and children absent from school etc.

In order to achieve success in our national projects on achieving “Swachh Bharat” we have to undertake the following major programmes and complete these successfully in time.

1. Integrated water resource management and wetland development: 

India is considered as a water stressed country and the situation is getting worse in recent years. The annual per capita availability of water in India was 6008 cubic meter [cum] when the country achieved independence in 1947 and it came down drastically in the next 50 years to about 2260 cum in 1997 and now it is only 1800 cum. If no serious efforts are made in harvesting rain water, developing the wetlands, preventing water pollution and managing the water resource scientifically, it is estimated that, the availability of water per capita will fall to as low as 750 cum per capita by the next 50 years. Unless appropriate measures are taken to increase the fresh water resources, the country will head towards a disastrous situation being unable to quench the thirst of the nation. In order to have our effective water management, the wetlands have to be developed and new ones are to be created with rain water harvesting. The mines and industries should be encouraged to harvest rain water and utilize this for meeting their own requirements during off season. The drinking water either from rivers or aquifers has to be analysed time to time before allowing the people for drinking and other domestic purposes. The ground and surface water contaminated with toxic heavy metals, fluoride etc. should be properly treated.

2. Waste Management:

The organic and other wastes generated in rural and urban India should not be allowed to pollute our rivers and other water bodies as well as the land mass and the air surrounding us. These wastes should be processed to recover values while keeping our environment clean. The organic wastes including the human excreta should be processed locally at different sites or centrally at a suitable site to produce biogas and organic manure through anaerobic digestion. The technology of this process is well developed and it can be implemented in small, medium and large scales.

The product gas can be used for cooking food and the manure for applying in the agricultural fields instead of chemical fertilizers which are harmful to the environment. The wastes other than the organic ones like paper, metal scraps, plastics, glasses etc. (about 20 – 30% of urban wastes) can also be collected locally or centrally and separated from each other and sold for recycling in their respective industries. The solid organic materials particularly human excreta in urban sewage water should be separated from the water and subjected to anaerobic digestion for producing biogas and manure. The purified sewage water can be utilized for various purposes including gardening, de-dusting the road, washing vehicles etc.

In the rural India, the domestic and agricultural wastes are mostly organic. These wastes similarly can be subjected to simple composting by burying these in shallow pits and this covered with earth or can be subjected to anaerobic bio digestion to produce the biogas in addition to organic manure. In rural India, the latrines with above facility can be made eco-friendly and also economical. This would prevent the human excreta to pollute the water, land and air and can be converted into valuable organic manure and biogas.

3. Smokeless Ecological Cooking Facility

The rural woman and their children very often suffer from various pulmonary diseases due to long exposures to smoke produced in cooking food using fuel wood chulla in a less ventilated kitchen. This can be avoided if the cooking is done by using solar cooker, biogas or smokeless chulla with chimney. The rural women should be educated and these should be provided by the government to the rural families in a subsidised rate.

4. Processing of Industrial Solid Wastes and effluents:

The mineral based and other industries are growing at a very fast rate in the country and at the same time producing a lot of pollution problems for water, land and air. These industries should be motivated to use environment friendly technologies for treating their wastes and effluents and also assisting the people in the neighboring area to keep their environment clean. They should recover values from their wastes and recycle the waste water after treatment. These industries should utilize their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds for creating clean environment in their area and educate the people in their locality to lead a clean life.

5. Awareness Programmes for clean living:

The people in our country whether in rural or urban areas should be educated through various programmes to contribute and cooperate in implementing different projects as mentioned above for achieving “Swachh Bharat”. The school and college students should learn and demonstrate through various programmes for keeping clean. Demonstration programmes related to community health survey, development of water bodies and keeping these clean for portable purposes, construction of ecological latrines with facility for composting the excreta, anaerobic digestion of organic wastes etc. use of solar and wind energy should be undertaken by government, industries and other commercial units in rural and urban areas to motivate the people to practice various measures for clean living.

Unless an integrated approach for implementing all the above programmes is made simultaneously, the objective of creating a “Swachh Bharat” will not be achieved.  In this integrated national programme, the united efforts of the government, the private and public sector undertakings and the people of the country in general are essential.

(Prof P K Jena is a former Director General, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Governmentof India)