Open Forum
New
Delhi, 31 December 2014
2015, Cleaner
India?
GET
FUNDAMENTALS RIGHT
By Dhurjati
Mukherjee
Will 2015 see the ‘Clean India’ mega
campaign shift gear from photo-ops to genuine and concerted action? Unless the
Government takes a holistic view, it may just end up as yet another programme
under a different name. Actually, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is nothing new. It
is an extension of Central Rural Sanitation Programme (of Rajiv Gandhi) to be
followed by the Complete Sanitation Campaign (of Atal Behari
Vajpayee). Only Modi has given it a particular thrust by invoking the name
of Mahatma Gandhi and calling on people to ensure cleanliness in and around the
community.
To make the programme fully operational,
the intrinsic need is the availability of water along with proper drainage,
sewage and waste management system. Surveys have revealed that most toilets in
schools in rural and semi-urban areas don’t have water connections, thus making
their usage impossible. The sources of water in villages are ponds which are
polluted and trigger various diseases. There is no clear guideline of how the
Government intends to either tackle this problem by helping State governments
or whether the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) would intervene and start
work in one or two villages in each district.
Even in many railway stations,
several toilets do not have adequate supply of water and are not regularly
cleaned. Then there are slums, squatter settlements and refugee colonies in
crowded urban agglomerations, where there are no toilets and no availability of
water, thereby forcing the people to defecate in the open. The dynamics of the
whole problem is easier said but its accomplishment is quite difficult, both
from the financial angle and the perspective of making people use toilets and
ensure its cleanliness.
Financially, the Government would
need anything around over 2 per cent of GDP annually till the target date.
Obviously, a part of this huge expenditure has to be borne by raising
additional funds through disinvestment or through checking enormous leakages in
social schemes. What has not been clearly outlined is whether the private
sector can be requested to adopt one village, near this area of operation, and
carry out this sanitation programme.
The other aspect of the programme is
the generation of awareness about the hazards of open defecation for which NGOs
and community based organizations would have to be involved. The CPCB had
written to some NGOs about the work of cleaning of water bodies but this was
not followed up for reasons best known to it. Both the work of awareness
generation of cleaning of ponds etc. and using toilets have to be vested with
the civil society organizations for best results.
The Abhiyan requires that the
panchayats and State public health directorates to be little more active. The
supply of clean drinking water is possibly a bigger problem than open
defecation. Water becomes contaminated due to industrial effluents, man-induced
activities such as using fertilizer for increased food productivity, dumping of
untreated wastewater and garbage and also from natural substances found in the
earth’s crust such as arsenic and fluoride. At best, we treat about around 70
per cent of our domestic waste, dumping the rest untreated into the nearest
water bodies.
Without delving into figures, it is
confirmed that sources of most water available in rural and semi-urban areas
are not fit for drinking purposes, as there is contamination, in some
cases severe. As per one estimate, over
30 per cent of the rural population lack access to drinking water, and only
seven States have full availability of drinking water for rural inhabitants.
Arsenic, fluoride, lead and mercury
have been found in parts of the country and a section of people face severe
consequences due to such contamination, including death. The spread of arsenic
contamination, specially in West Bengal, Bihar
and U.P. has compounded the problem. Arsenic has acquired an unparallel
reputation as a poison with arsenic trioxide, a tasteless and odourless
inorganic compound. It was first detected in Taiwan
but in the early 90s was found in West Bengal and Bangladesh. Arsenic in groundwater
has been found above the maximum possible limit (0.05 mg. per litre) in 79
blocks in nine districts of West Bengal. The
content of arsenic is particularly very high in groundwater of south 24
Parganas where reports indicate 0.96 to 3.2 mg./litre.
Around eight million people reside
in these villages over an area of 40,000 km. and may be considered at risk of
arsenic poisoning while around 40 per cent people have been drinking arsenic
contaminated water (All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health). In
Bangladesh, an estimated 30 to 35 million people have been drinking arsenic
contaminated tubewell water and more than 14,000 people with arsenic-relates
ailments have so far been identified (Feroze Ahmed, 2000).
Streams, lakes and rivers are the
final resting place of cans, bottles, plastics and other various types of
household articles. Fertilizers and pesticides, used in agriculture, enter
water bodies as run-off or percolate into the groundwater aquifers. Estimate is
that around 68.5 litres of industrial wastewater is dumped directly into local
rivers and streams without prior treatment. Groundwater has been found unfit
for drinking in about 25 industrial zones of the country.
As around 90 per cent of drinking
water needs are met from groundwater sources, both its depletion and
contamination has posed a big challenge in recent times. While a recent study
by NASA revealed that groundwater levels in northern India have been declining by more
than 33 cm. (one ft.) per year over the past decade, the extent of water
pollution has spread quite rapidly and has assumed disastrous dimensions in
certain regions. Worse, little action is being taken by local bodies due to
lack of resources and adequate technical expertise.
Experts in the field have concluded
that isolated working of the departments of health, environment, rural
development both at the Centre and States has not tackled the problem from the First to the 11th Plan period,
though there has been steady increase in water and sanitation sectors. WHO
expert and member, National Ganga River Basin Authority Prof. K. J. Nath, says
the basic maladies of the present set up can easily be identified.
These are: absence of a core sector
of environmental health within the department of health, including experts with
skills in environmental epidemiology, health and socio-ecological sciences;
lack of appropriate legislations related to environment and health; lack of
information on environmental and epidemiological aspects and environmental
health impacts related to air water, soil, shelter and ecology; lack of
training and orientation of health professionals and lack of public awareness
and understanding and risk perception and communication strategies for risk
abatement.
While Government support will be
forthcoming, it is imperative to spread awareness among the rural population
regarding water and sanitation on a massive scale, the responsibility for which
should be entrusted to NGOs with expertise and skill. They should also be given
the task of training panchayat representatives as also teaching people in
simple terms to change their age-old practices keeping in view the intrinsic
relationship between water, sanitation and human health. Additionally, there is
need for a programme of epidemiological research on environmental health
impacts related to water, air, soil and ecology in order to understand the
problems. And its findings must be disseminated at the grass-root level.
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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